Investigation of the effectiveness of psychodrama on improving obsessive-compulsive symptoms and anger in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder

Previous studies have highlighted the significant effect of psychodrama in healing grief, anger and a variety of psychiatric ailments, including mood and anxiety disorders and excoriation as an obsessive-compulsive related disorder; however, there is limited research on using psychodrama to work with people diagnosed with OCD.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of psychodrama on the improvement of obsessive-compulsive symptoms and anger in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

This research was implemented via a quasi-experimental with pretest-posttest design. Statistical population were all of OCD patients presented to Nik Avin psychology and counseling clinic during the months of June 2020 to July 2020. The subjects were 24 OCD patients (16 females and eight males) who were selected by convenience sampling, and were randomly divided into equal-sized experimental and control groups. During the study, both the experimental and control groups were receiving pharmacotherapy regimen, but the experimental group also received three sessions of psychodrama treatment in the form of group therapy for four weeks. The protocol of psychodrama sessions proposed in the present study was created and designed by the first author of this article (Shirani) in 2020. Data were collected before and after the intervention using the Maudsley Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory (1977) and Novaco Anger Inventory-Short Form (1994).

Multivariate Analysis of covariance of the data using SPSS23 showed that psychodrama therapy is significantly effective in improving obsessive-compulsive symptoms and anger in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (p<0/05).

Patients with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder who participated in psychodrama group therapy sessions showed improvement of Obsessive-Compulsive symptoms and reduced anger. According to the results of this study psychodrama as an effective therapy for improvement of OCD symptoms is suggested.