Determining the Effectiveness of Cognitive-Analytical Intervention of Group Obsession Treatment on Extreme Responsibility and Perfectionism in People with Symptoms of Intellectual-Practical Obsession

 Obsessive-compulsive disorder is diagnosed based on the presence of unwanted and disturbing thoughts and repetitive behaviors. There is a strong link between dimensions of perfectionism and obsessive-compulsive disorder. In other words, perfectionism can affect the response to treatment in obsessive-compulsive disorder (7). One of the vulnerable cognitive beliefs is extreme responsibility, which is important in the experience of obsessive issues. One of the treatments whose effectiveness has been confirmed in psychological disorders is cognitive-analytical therapy. This short-term therapy adopts an approach based on increasing knowledge, effectively solving problems, and strengthening the patient's motivation to make lifestyle changes. Therefore, the present study investigated the effectiveness of the group cognitive-analytical intervention of obsessive-compulsive therapy on extreme responsibility and perfectionism in people with symptoms of intellectual-practical obsession.

This quasi-experimental research employed a pretest-posttest design and one control group. The statistical population of the current research comprised all people suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder who were referred to Talieh Salamat Clinic in Tehran City, Iran, in 2021. In this research, the purposeful sampling method was used due to the difficulty of access. In this way, 30 people were selected from the statistical population using targeted sampling and randomly divided into experimental and control groups (each group includes 15 people). Then, both groups in the pretest and posttest responded to the Multi-Dimensional Perfectionism Scale (Besharat, 2007) and Responsibility Scale of the California Psychological Questionnaire (Gough, 1987). Obsession treatment intervention was implemented in the experimental group, and the control group was not subjected to any treatment program. The inclusion criteria included suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder, having at least a diploma level of education, not participating in other therapeutic interventions at the same time, and not suffering from another psychological disease at the same time. The exclusion criteria also included the absence of more than three sessions and non-observance of group therapy rules. Data analysis was carried out in two parts: descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. At the level of descriptive statistics, frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation were used. At the level of inferential statistics, univariate covariance analysis was used. Data analysis was done in SPSS software version 24, and the significance level of the tests was considered to be 0.05.

 The findings showed that the cognitive-analytical intervention of obsessive-compulsive treatment decreased the scores of extreme responsibility (p<0.001) and perfectionism (p<0.001) in people with obsessive-compulsive symptoms.

 Based on the results, the intervention of obsession treatment with a cognitive-analytical approach is effective in reducing extreme responsibility and perfectionism in people with obsessive-compulsive symptoms.