A new type of therapy combining feces and fake rubber hands might be able to help people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) overcome their fears of touching contaminated surfaces, according to new research.
“OCD can be an extremely debilitating condition for many people, but the treatments are not always straightforward,” said Baland Jalal, a University of Cambridge neuroscientist who was part of a team assessing if rubber hands could be a potential new type of exposure therapy.
Traditional exposure therapy often involves instructing OCD patients to touch contaminated surfaces, such as a toilet seat, and not wash their hands. It aims to help patients control their fears in a safe, managed environment, but many find it too difficult and cannot even begin therapy.
The British-US trial involved patients holding a fake hand and watching it being stroked until they developed a sensation that it was their own.
The rubber hand was then smeared with feces while their real hand was dabbed with damp tissue to mimic the feeling of feces touching their skin.
The patients were asked to rate their disgust and anxiety levels, and the strength of the urge to wash their hands.
“Exposure therapy can be very stressful and so is not always effective or even feasible for many patients,” Jalal said.
“If you can provide an indirect treatment that’s reasonably realistic, where you contaminate a rubber hand instead of a real hand, this might provide a bridge that will allow more people to tolerate exposure therapy or even replace [it] altogether,” he added.
OCD is a psychiatric condition that affects as many as one in 50 people worldwide. It can have serious effects on people’s lives, mental health, relationships and ability to hold a job.
OCD comes in various types, one of which is characterized by severe contamination fears — even from touching everyday things like switches or door handles — leading to excessive washing.
The results of the rubber hand study, which were published on Thursday in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, suggest fake hand contamination might help, Jalal said.
“The rubber hand illusion often makes people laugh at first, helping put them at ease,” Jalal said. “It’s also straightforward and cheap compared to virtual reality, and so can easily reach patients in distress no matter where they are.”
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS