Upcoming Presentations by Our Staff and Affiliates

Thröstur Björgvinsson, PhD, ABPP and Bjarne Hansen, PhD will give a State-of-the-Art Clinician Session

The status of international dissemination of the Bergen 4-day OCD Treatment: Key elements of effective implementation of the treatment

at the 2024 ADAA Annual Conference to be held April 11-14, 2024, in Boston, MA.

The Bergen 4-day treatment (B4DT) is a concentrated exposure treatment (cET) where the patient receives individually tailored CBT delivered during four consecutive days. B4DT can be categorized as an individual treatment delivered in a group setting, since the treatment is delivered in groups with 3 to 6 patients with a therapist-patient ratio of 1:1. The B4DT has proven highly effective for treating obsessive-compulsive disorder, with almost no drop-out rates and almost 70% of patients reported as recovered at 12-month follow-up. A follow-up study demonstrated that the treatment outcome was stable 4 years after completing treatment. The B4DT approach has received tremendous attention around the world. For example, in October of 2018, Drs. Bjarne Hansen and Gerd Kvale (the developers of B4DT) were selected by Time magazine as two of “The Health Care 50: Fifty People Transforming Health Care in 2018.” The approach builds on four decades of empirical research and theories about the most effective approach to OCD treatment. The innovation and strength of the work is how it combines the most effective elements of proven treatment into one of the most profound, rapid, and robust treatment approaches that we have seen in recent years. Thus, this approach provides for a truly transformative treatment and it has the potential to meaningfully improve health care delivery in the U.S.

Over 3000 patients with OCD have been effectively treated with the B4DT in Norway during the last decade. Furthermore, several OCD patients have completed the B4DT in Sweden, Iceland, Germany, Finland, Singapore and the USA. All studies strongly support the effectiveness of this 4-day approach. Post-pandemic future international dissemination plans are actively being implemented. So far teams from Australia, Kenya, and Ecuador have signed up and  will be trained in the B4DT and will complete OCD treatment pilots in 2024. We will report on these efforts, including cultural dissemination challenges and treatment outcomes.

We will describe and discuss the structure of the B4DT, including the key factors/techniques that are tied to treatment effectiveness. This includes case formulation, the preparation of the patients prior to entering the B4DT, the structure of the four days and the treatment techniques implemented and rationale behind it. We will use videos of real patients receiving the treatment to highlight the treatment approach and case examples to highlight the treatment techniques used in the  B4DT. This workshop is for experienced clinicians from all disciplines. Students, trainees and residents are welcome and encouraged to attend to learn about this transformative treatment.

Three learning objectives:

• Learn about the status of the International Dissemination of B4DT all over the world and some of the cultural challenges
• Learn about the development and the rationale behind the B4DT
• Learn about the key therapy technique used in implementing Exposure with Response Prevention (ERT) in the B4DT format