This webinar will illustrate how patient-oriented translational research advances clinical practice for OCD. First, Dr. Simpson will review the clinical presentation of OCD and our first-line treatments followed by a discussion of how clinical trials can be used to address clinically important and relevant questions, leading to practice guidelines and treatment algorithms. Dr. Simpson will highlight two urgent clinical problems and how research is addressing them. These problems are:

1) Though we have two first-line treatments that can get half of people with OCD well, most people cannot access them. This is due in part to clinicians not knowing how to diagnose and treat OCD. To address this problem, Dr. Simpson will describe her research program’s partnership with the New York State Office of Mental Health to study how best to teach frontline clinicians in how to diagnose and treat OCD. This provides an example of implementation science.

2) We have two good first-line treatments but they do not work for all people and we don’t know why. This is due in large part because we do not know what causes OCD or how our treatments work on the brain. Regarding this problem, Dr. Simpson will describe how we use brain imaging methods to study the brain mechanisms underlying obsessions and compulsions, with the goal of identifying robust new treatment targets.

In sum, this presentation will provide a brief update/overview about OCD, while also outlining how different types of research methods (e.g., clinical trials, implementation science, neuroimaging) can be used to address important clinical problems and how the data can lead to changes in practice that will impact the mental health of our communities.