Psychoeducational treatments for obsessive-compulsive disorder: A narrative review emphasizing family-based approaches

Table 1 The goals and purpose of psychoeducation

Goals/purpose	Explanation
Improving understanding of the illness	Psychoeducation aims to improve the patient’s and families’ understanding of the illness. The purpose of imparting information is to promote awareness as well as acceptance of the illness. Education about the illness paves the way for other purposes of psychoeducation including promoting empowerment, improving coping and self-management skills, enhancing treatment seeking and treatment engagement, instilling hope, reducing stress, alleviating feelings of isolation and stigma, and aiding recovery. Awareness about the illness promotes tolerance of the illness among family members, reduces family conflicts, and improves family support[17-19,29,34]
Promoting empowerment	Psychoeducation is empowering because it emphasizes the fundamental right of individuals to be informed about their illnesses. Psychoeducation empowers patients and families by providing a realistic appraisal of the consequences of the illness and the difficulties they face in life. Psychoeducation restores the patient’s independence, self-esteem, and dignity. Psychoeducation enables patients to manage the effects of the illness in a proactive manner, focuses on developing collaborative and trusting treatment relationships, and allows patients and families to actively participate in the treatment. Empowerment is associated with improvements in mental wellbeing, and personal and family functioning[17,19,35-37]
Enhancing the patient’s and family’s ability to cope with illness	Psychoeducation provides the means to manage, cope, and live with a chronic psychiatric disorder. Enhancing coping improves the acceptance of the chronic nature of the illness for patients and families. Organizing the subjective perceptions and experiences of patients and families objectively helps in developing adaptive attitudes and behaviours and inculcates a sense of mastery over the illness. The ability to deal with the stresses and strains of the illness develops with time. Families learn skills to deal with the patient’s problems similar to the ways that professionals handle these demands. Improved family coping reduces conflicts and improves family functioning. Improved awareness and belief in the ability to cope with the illness reduces stigma, improves motivation, encourages treatment seeking, and promotes treatment engagement[19,34-36,38]
Provision of emotional and practical support	Psychoeducation provides support for patients and their families. Emotional support is provided to the individual to deal with the stressful consequences of the illness. Practical support or tangible assistance is often necessary for patients to improve resilience and handle the demands of the illness. Group support helps reduce the feelings of isolation, despair, low self-esteem, and stigma. Families need emotional support to deal with psychological consequences of the patient’s illness. Practical support is provided to families by informing them of resources such as groups or organizations. Efforts are made to increase their social network by increasing interpersonal, social, recreational, and health-service contacts of the families. Supportive interventions are associated with better treatment outcomes, increased wellbeing, and improved patient and family functioning[27,29,30,34,38]
Achieving recovery	The goals of treatment of mental illnesses have gradually shifted from clinical, to functional, and social recovery. The goals of psychosocial treatment have similarly moved from achieving clinical remission and relapse prevention to supporting and sustaining functional and social recovery. The focus is on creating the optimal environment in which the patient can achieve recovery and helping families to contribute to the patient’s recovery[30,39-42]
Reducing stress and improving functioning	Psychoeducation aims to reduce stress in patient and the family through behavioural and supportive methods. Resilience to stress is built by imparting information and teaching skills to deal with the illness-related stressors. Supportive techniques are used to promote adaptive and improved functioning of the individual and the family. Supportive family environments can help the patient achieve recovery[17,27,34,36,38]