One Minute Insight
Professor Ed Bullmore discusses the importance of developing new treatments for people with a mental health condition, and a study to understand more about inflammation and depression.
One common behaviour of people with OCD symptoms is repeated hand washing, to prevent a feeling of contamination. Excessive washing can be harmful, however, causing problems such as skin damage as well as reducing people’s mental health and wellbeing. Furthermore, severe contamination fears may prevent people from leaving their own homes.
Compulsive behaviours are related to ‘cognitive rigidity’ – finding it difficult to adapt to new situations or rules and consider alternative behaviours or responses. Current treatments are not effective for all sufferers, with up to 40% of patients not experiencing significant benefit from the most common options.
Cambridge researchers have developed a new treatment to help with excessive hand washing through an app. A study to test the new app used otherwise healthy patients who had expressed strong fears of contamination on the Padua Inventory Contamination Fear Subscale, which is a questionnaire commonly used by researchers to measure concerns associated with contamination.
Participants who used the app to watch videos of washing their hands or touching contaminated surfaces had reduced feelings of contamination and improved cognitive flexibility.
Further research is needed and researchers hope the technology will help people manage their symptoms and experience better quality of life and wellbeing.
Many patients are overlooked or misdiagnosed, seeing a variety of clinical specialists before they receive a diagnosis.
The Cambridge team were keen to improve the referral and so developed a new screening tool called the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) for front-line clinicians and social care professionals.
The AQ is a questionnaire designed by the researchers to evaluate how many autistic traits a person has. If a patient’s scores are high, the tool alerts clinical staff to make a referral for a full assessment. It was first developed in 2001 and was one of the first metrics of the autism spectrum. The full questionnaire has 50 items but the Cambridge team produced a brief version of just 10 items, known as the AQ-10.
This new diagnosis tool provides a quick but reliable indicator that someone may potentially have undiagnosed autism, therefore ensuring their referral for a diagnosis is both more accurate and quantitative, not just based on opinion. Ensuring that the right patients are referred to the specialist clinics means a better use of clinic time and a quicker journey from the referrer to the final assessment.
Once diagnosed, the patient can then be helped to access the support and therapies they require. The AQ has been used widely in research studies, and in 2013 NICE guidelines it was recommended for use with adults with suspected autism or Asperger Syndrome. The tool is now used widely both nationally and internationally.