Original Research Article_The Role of Mental Imagery in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: An Explorative Study

Abstract

Background: The present study aimed to investigate how mental imagery affects the manifestation of symptoms among people with OCD, considering its impact on symptom severity. Methodology: For the said purpose, we compared people with OCD (n=30) with a clinical control group (people suffering from Schizophrenia; (n=30) and community control group (n=30). Yale Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (assess symptom severity of OCD), Spontaneous Use of Imagery Scale (spontaneity of imagery), Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (vividness of imagery) along with Mental Clock Task (ability to generate images), Change Detection Task (maintenance of imagery), Match to Sample Task (image inspection), Mental Rotation Task (image manipulation-transformation), Ambiguous Figure Task (image restructuring) and Image Combination Task (mental synthesis) were used in the study. Results: The result suggests that there is a difference in terms of the spontaneous use of mental imagery in daily life among the three groups. Regression analysis showed that the Image Generation and Image Manipulation-Transformation capacity plays a role in the manifestation or maintenance of Obsessive and Compulsive symptoms in OCD. Both the factors independently predict the symptom severity of Obsessive Compulsive disorder, but not in Schizophrenia.