Benefits of Intensive Outpatient Treatment for OCD Patients
If you’re living with OCD, you’ve probably heard that therapy takes time. And that IS true. Meaningful change rarely happens overnight.
But what happens when you’ve been doing regular therapy… and you’re still stuck? You’re attending your sessions consistently and doing your homework, and you’re still finding that your OCD is interfering with your work, school, relationships, or even just trying to function every day.
If this sounds familiar to you, the problem may not be the type of treatment you’re doing but rather the amount you’re getting.
At Soultality Psychotherapy in Boston, MA, we created our Intensive Outpatient Treatment (IOT) program because many people with OCD need more support, structure, and follow-through than traditional weekly therapy can provide. This program is designed to accelerate progress using evidence-based approaches in a compassionate, highly personalized setting.
Today, we’re going to talk about why we started this new program, who it’s for, when it’s a good time for a higher level of care, and the benefits of an intensive approach to OCD treatment.
The Creation of Our Intensive Outpatient Treatment (IOT)
OCD treatment is shown to be most effective when it’s done consistently, strategically, and with enough support to sustain the changes being made.
The longer that we’ve worked with OCD patients here at Soultality, we noticed that for some of our patients, one hour a week simply wasn’t enough repetition or structure to create lasting relief from their OCD. We wanted to find a way to streamline our patients’ treatments, so we decided to put our heads together and create something new!
We wanted a program that preserved the warmth and individualized care we were known for, while delivering ERP in the format research shows can be the most effective. And after a year of discovery, testing, and research, our efforts led us to our Intensive Outpatient Treatment OCD Program!
“One of the biggest strengths of our intensive program is our ability to be completely individualized and really design treatment around the unique presentations of each client. Our thorough intake process, combined with our approach of taking one intensive client at a time, means that nobody is simply following a pre-existing curriculum or treatment protocol; it's tailored for them. While we have a rough guideline to fall back on, our focus is really on providing what is going to be most relevant and helpful for a particular client.” Jeff Adams, LMHC
What is Intensive Outpatient Treatment (IOT) for OCD?
Our OCD Intensive Outpatient Treatment Program is a short-term, structured treatment option designed for people who want more support and faster relief from their OCD symptoms. It’s more than just adding ‘more therapy’ to an established treatment schedule. It’s completely personalized, structured, evidence-based, and designed to achieve faster, longer-lasting results for our patients.
The IOT program is held in-person at our office in Cambridge over the course of 3 weeks, with approximately 5 hours of in-office treatment per week. Over the treatment time, the goal is to create enough therapeutic momentum for real change to happen! This model allows us to help our patients accomplish more repeated, supported practice in a condensed timeframe, which leads to more long-lasting relief from OCD symptoms.
This higher level of care may be helpful if:
Weekly therapy hasn’t produced the progress you hoped for
Your OCD is significantly interfering with work, school, or relationships
You struggle with compulsions despite weekly appointments
You want a more accelerated path toward symptom relief
You have a break in your schedule and want to use it intentionally
You’re able to stay strong for a couple of days, then fall back into old patterns
ERP is the Center of Our IOT Program
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is the gold standard treatment for OCD. ERP helps brains learn that anxiety and uncertainty are tolerable, and that feared outcomes do not require compulsive behaviors to prevent them.
ERP helps the brain establish new learning that competes with old fear-based patterns. Over time, the brain starts believing that it can handle discomfort and that it doesn’t need the compulsions to feel safe.
Structuring our program around a solid core of ERP allows us to navigate common pitfalls experienced in weekly ERP therapy, such as running out of session time, avoidance, or rushing through exposures.
Common OCD Symptoms Treated in IOT
Our program supports people experiencing a wide range of OCD presentations, including:
Contamination fears
Harm obsessions
Intrusive thoughts
Mental rituals
Relationship OCD (ROCD)
Pure-O presentations
“My favorite part of the process is collecting all of a new client's assessments, speaking to their collateral providers, and conducting a long intake session with them so as to get up to speed on their story and their treatment journey thus far. Going through this process helps me learn a lot about what someone is going through in a short period of time, and it also allows a client another go at really getting it all out on the table and telling their story. This often leads to new insight right away, even if they aren't reporting anything new.” - Jeff Adams LMHC
The Benefits of Our Intensive Outpatient Treatment Program
Accelerated Progress
More frequent sessions mean more opportunities to practice exposures, reduce exposure avoidance outside of sessions, and build new, healthier pathways for the brain. Many of our patients notice meaningful changes within a couple weeks, rather than months (and months) of weekly treatments.
Built-In Accountability
Many patients have a hard time doing their exposures independently outside of sessions. In an intensive format like our IOT, our patients get to practice their daily ERP with their clinician there to help them. This helps us adjust when something isn’t working, stay accountable, and stay engaged long enough to see relief.
Greater Treatment Precision
With multiple sessions per week, we’re able to observe our patients’ patterns in real time and refine their treatment plans quickly. Instead of waiting weeks between sessions to troubleshoot, we’re able to make adjustments on the fly. This leads to more efficient care.
Stronger Skill Integration
Building up skills like cognitive defusion or grounding requires repetition to become a natural response. In intensive treatments, this allows our patients to practice these skills with their clinician enough times that it becomes second nature in their daily life.
Fresh Perspectives
In our program, patients may work with more than one clinician. While this can feel surprising at first, it’s intentional!
We want our patients to have a well-rounded ERP experience, and we’ve found that bringing in multiple providers during intensive treatments allows patients to learn and grow faster.
Access to More Support Resources
All patients in the IOT program have access to our support groups. Our groups are a great place to learn from other people and share your experiences with people who get it. Plus, this is a great resource to have after the IOT program concludes.
What Makes Soultality’s Program Different From Other Intensives
Not all intensive OCD programs are designed the same way. Some programs focus primarily on increasing session frequency or operate under a set curriculum.
When we were creating our program, we knew we wanted something different for our patients. We spent a year developing our IOT program to be completely individualized, structured with built-in flexibility, and to bring in different learning styles.
Every patient is different, and we wanted to create a program that was flexible enough to accommodate everyone’s unique needs, while giving people the maximum level of care, condensed into 3 weeks.
Plus, we only take one IOT patient at a time, ensuring they get the attention they deserve. And clients have the option to add a fourth treatment week if desired.
“Patients have been vocal about our team's ability to really understand and 'see' their OCD process, which has catalyzed their own insight-building processes. Front-loading with this, then offering useful and actionable skills, and finally facilitating really well-targeted ERP has led clients to report they really "get" their struggles - and what's needed for treatment - more than ever before. With this, we feel like we're accomplishing our goal of providing accelerated treatment over a short time span.” - Jeff Adams, LMHC
Manage Your OCD Strategically with Soultality Psychotherapy
OCD can make life feel exhausting and overwhelming. And for those who are doing the work and still aren’t achieving the relief they’re after, our IOT program is a wonderful resource.
We created the Intensive Outpatient Treatment Program so we can provide people with focused, individualized, research-based care for those who want a higher level of care in their OCD treatment. Many of our patients come to us when their weekly sessions aren’t enough, and they want more relief in their day-to-day lives.
If you’re wondering if this program is a good fit for you, please reach out for a consultation. Our team can help you explore your options and determine if the IOT program at Soultality Psychotherapy in Boston, MA, is the right next step for your OCD treatment.