This is a recording from a live event that occurred on November 7, 2025.
In evidence-based practice, there are a number of protocols a clinician can use for presenting mental disorders. What happens when a client presents with two disorders that are both highly distressing and impactful? Does the clinician offer two separate protocols? Or is there a combined approach based upon evidence-based psychotherapy principles that may address both? Posttraumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder have high levels of comorbidity, with epidemiologic data suggesting rates of comorbidity of as much as 31% (Brown et al. 2001). Further, the evidence base is strong for exposure therapy for both PTSD (APA, 2025) and for OCD (Fernando & Selai, 2021). And it is well-known that both approaches - Prolonged Exposure and Exposure and Response Prevention, respectively - overlap greatly in terms of the evidence-based principles that undergird the protocols themselves (Abramowitz, Deacon, & Whiteside, 2019). This presentation focuses on best practices in exposure therapy and offer a framework for using these principles for treating clients presenting with comorbid PTSD and OCD.
