A Network Analysis of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Symptom Subtypes and Cognitive Beliefs: An Exploratory Study in a Community Sample
Abstract
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a highly heterogenous condition characterized by a number of distinct subtypes, several maladaptive functional relationships between behaviors and cognitions, and an only partially understood etiology. Despite the apparent complexity of the disorder, the DSM-5 construal of OCD focuses merely on obsessional thinking and repetitive behavior in the diagnostic criteria - discounting well-established and complicated relationships among symptoms (Abramowitz & Jacoby 2015). The cognitive-behavioral model of OCD posits that maladaptive beliefs and their behavioral reinforcement are of high importance to the etiology and maintenance of the disorder. Although the model has received empirical support, there is an equivocal understanding in the extant literature regarding how different maladaptive cognitive beliefs interact with one another and contribute the various subtypes of OCD (e.g. Wheaton et al. 2010). Furthermore, although the cognitive behavioral model emphasizes multidirectional and functional relationships between symptoms and beliefs, most empirical research linking cognitive beliefs with behaviors implicitly model cognitions as latent entities from which symptomatology emerges. An alternative approach to investigating this topic, which might enrich the present understanding of the complex and multi-directional associations between symptoms and beliefs, may be found in the network approach to modeling psychopathology. Within this approach, mental disorder is conceptualized as a set of causally connected symptoms, rather than as a consequence of underlying latent factors (Borsboom & Cramer 2013). Although this approach has become increasingly popular as a means to model psychopathology, obsessive-compulsive disorder is less frequently represented in the network literature than other disorders. The present study seeks to addresses this gap in the literature by constructing a network from data collected in a community sample measuring both OCD symptoms and beliefs.
Subject Area
Clinical psychology|Psychology
Recommended Citation
Leone, Lewis, "A Network Analysis of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Symptom Subtypes and Cognitive Beliefs: An Exploratory Study in a Community Sample" (2020). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI27958213.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI27958213
