Upcoming Presentations by Our Staff and Affiliates

Thröstur Björgvinsson, PhD, ABPP will be participating in a Symposia with four other presenters titled, “Understanding and Enhancing the Immediate and Long Term Effects of cognitive behavioral therapy for OCD”

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

The title of Dr. Björgvinsson presentation is: A concentrated approach to treating OCD: A pilot study examining the feasibility and effectiveness of the Bergen Four Day Treatment in the U.S.

The Bergen Four Day Treatment is a novel concentrated approach to delivering exposure and response prevention for OCD that has demonstrated effectiveness in European samples. Building off the effective components of individual ERP, group therapy, and intensive treatment approaches, the B4DT is a four-day concentrated treatment that is often described as providing individual treatment in a group context. However, the effectiveness of the B4DT for OCD has not been tested outside Scandinavia. Therefore, the current pilot study tested the feasibility and effectiveness of this novel treatment approach for reducing OCD and other psychiatric symptoms in the United States. Findings from 48 adults with OCD who completed the B4DT indicated that OCD, anxiety, and depression symptom severity significantly decreased from pre- to post-treatment and gains were maintained through six months follow-up. On the main outcome measure, the clinician-administered Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale, the patients scores went from severe range to mild range; specifically, the average scores of 27.04 (pre-treatment) fell to 11.67 (post-treatment), 12.73 (3-months follow-up) and 13.67 (6-month follow-up). Further, 80% of patients demonstrated 35% reduction in the OCD symptom severity. The B4DT was rated as highly acceptable by the US patients. For example, over 95% of the patients stated that they would recommend the treatment to a friend and 86% stated that the treatment met either “almost all” or “most” of their clinical needs. These findings provide the first evidence for the generalizability of the B4DT to patients with OCD in the United States, and first findings outside Scandinavia. Cultural and context-dependent issues that affected this dissemination pilot study are discussed in addition to future clinical and research directions.