Abstract
Recent cognitive-behavioral formulations of obsessive-compulsive disorder postulate that intrusive or obsessional thoughts are subject to appraisal. Extreme beliefs about the occurrence and meaning of intrusive thoughts direct appraisal, thus causing marked distress and subjective responsibility which may lead to neutralizing activity. A brief self-report belief inventory was developed from a 92-item pool to assess extreme beliefs concerning intrusive thoughts and responsibility, the control of such thoughts and their possible consequences, and the appropriateness of guilt and neutralizing behavior as a response. The inventory was developed sequentially on two nonclinical samples (N=125, N=265) to distinguish between neutralizing and nonneutralizing subjects. Initial psychometric data for the final instrument were obtained for two further nonclinical samples (N=61, N=50) along with a sample of OCD patients and a matched control group. The instrument showed satisfactory reliability and evidence of criterion, convergent, discriminant, and factorial validity. Finally, data from a heterogeneous outpatient medical sample (N=299) was used to test the relationship among obsessive-compulsive symptoms, mood state, and beliefs. The implications of these results for contemporary models of obsessive-compulsive disorder are discussed.
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his study was supported by a grant from le Fonds de la Recherche en Santé du Québec and was completed while the first author was the holder of a studentship from the Medical Research Council of Canada.
The authors thank two anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.
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Freeston, M.H., Ladouceur, R., Gagnon, F. et al. Beliefs about obsessional thoughts. J Psychopathol Behav Assess 15, 1–21 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00964320
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00964320