The researches on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have lasted for more than 70 years since Lewis teased out the concept of OCD in 1936 (McKay et al., 2004). Many scholars and researchers discuss the symptoms, pathologies and therapies of OCD. On March 16th, 2018, ScienceDaily, an American website focus on press releases about science, published an article with respect to OCD. In the article, “Which Skills will help patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder? Suffers of Obsessive-Compulsive disorder lack adaptive coping skills”, the author seeks to address that, based on the research of Moritz and his colleagues, OCD suffers could effectively manage their condition with the help of adaptive coping skills rather than compulsive or repetitive actions and other maladaptive strategies. In general, the article has an organized structure, and it promotes the public to pay attention to the issue of OCD; however, the article lacks of high credibility, accuracy and practical suggestions at the same time.
In the first place, the article has an organized structure, and it promotes the public to focus on OCD. It firstly introduces the characteristic of OCD and basic information of a newest research on OCD, including the name of the journal in which the research appeared, main research result, name and identity of researcher. After that, the article demonstrates how the research is carried out through briefly elucidating the research methodology. What is more, the article points out the research result that participants who suffered from OCD possessed fewer functional skills to cope with stress and more maladaptive coping skills than the participants suffered from depression and other people. At the same time, it is less likely for the participants who lacked adaptive coping skills to positively cope with difficulties and stress. In addition, the article stresses the importance of improving coping skills in daily life through quoting the words of the research, Steffen Moritz. Finally, the article points out the limitation of the research. Generally, the organized structure of the article greatly reduces the difficulty for the audiences to understand the article and saves people’s time in reading. Specifically, the article clearly presents its summary, which help the audiences to get its major ideas quickly. In the meantime, it is important to note that the article promotes the audiences to pay attention to the issue of OCD. As it claims in the beginning, patients who suffer from OCD experience serious reduction in the quality of life (Springer, 2018). OCD is characterized by compulsive thoughts and compulsive behaviors (Watson, Wu, & Cutshall, 2004). Compulsive behaviors could be divided into overt compulsion such as compulsive washing, checking and counting, as well as covert compulsion such as compulsive remembering, praying and inner confirmation (Abramowitz et al., 2006). All these issues seriously influence people’s normal life. For example, a person is hurrying to take part in an important meeting, but he has to come back again to check whether or not all the doors and windows are already closed even though he had already checked one time. In the end of the article, the author also quotes Moritz’s opinion on coping skills. It promotes the audiences especially for OCD patients to pay attention to this issue.
Nevertheless, the article lacks of high credibility. As the article mainly introduces a specific research with respect to OCD, all its contents focus on the research and its conclusion is on the basis of the research result. What is more, in the research implemented by Moritz and his colleagues, only 60 participants with OCD and 110 participants with depression engaged in the research. Moreover, it is difficult to make sure that the result of questionnaires truly reflects the situation of these participants even though researchers underline participants shall report their true reactions and emotions. In this way, it is common for the audiences to question its high credibility.
What is more, the article is not very accurate in the meantime. For instance, even though it points out the limitation of the research in the end, but it only mentions all the limitations. The article claims that, it is necessary for researchers to find out how to improve people’s coping skills during their childhood and adolescence on the basis of cognitive behavioral therapy or similar interventions. However, Moritz also points out other weakness of the research. In the first place, the research did not make a difference between OCD suffers and other psychiatric populations even though a clinical control group was recruited (Moritz et al., 2018). For example, patients who suffer from OCD may have similar symptoms with patients who experience anxiety disorders. Consequently, Moritz’s research cannot establish a specific and exact profile of dealing with deficits in OCD, and it cannot accurately rule out the differences between people who suffer from OCD and people experience depression (Moritz et al., 2018). In the second place, Moritz argues that, maladaptive and adaptive coping styles questionnaire has its weakness (Moritz et al., 2018). Even though the questionnaire has many long scales which increase its reliability in nonclinical samples, what can not be ignored is OCD suffers’ inattention tend to distort the results of the questionnaire easily (Moritz et al., 2018). Since patients with OCD have difficulties in focusing their attention, it is very likely for them to fail to finish the scale or fill the scales out with less and less care over time. In addition, longer scales of the questionnaire promotes certain patients suspect the research as they believe that framing similar content in different ways is adopted to test their trustworthiness (Moritz et al., 2018). In the third place, the research does not clearly prove that OCD suffers could improve their situation with the help of better coping skills. Current researches have different results in whether or not adaptive coping skills result to better outcomes. Besides, certain misunderstanding questions and items, imbalanced group sizes as well as restrict application of interview-based external assessment negatively impact the effectiveness of the research (Moritz et al., 2018). However, the article does not mention these limitations. Moreover, its headline and expression approach are not accurate either. F