Research Paper
The International Journal of Indian Psychology
ISSN 2348-5396 (e) | ISSN: 2349-3429 (p)
Volume 7, Issue 4, DIP: 18.01.043/20190704
DOI: 10.25215/0704.043
http://www.ijip.in | October- December, 2019
© 2019, S Kumar, S Mohanty & R Kumar; licensee IJIP. This is an Open Access Research distributed under the
terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly
cited.
Suppression and reappraisal in relation to dimensions of
obsessive-compulsive disorder in persons with OCD
S.Kumar
1
*, S.Mohanty
2
, R.Kumar
3
ABSTRACT
The persons with OCD have increased levels of negative emotions particularly anxiety, fear
and sadness. Also they have difficulties in regulating their negative emotions. In the present
paper, we explored the association of suppression and re-appraisal emotion regulation
strategies in relation to dimensions of OCD. 30 patients with OCD sampled from Institute of
Mental Health and Hospital, Agra were individually administered Emotion Regulation
Questionnaire (Gross & John 2003) and Dimensional Obsessive-Compulsive Scale
(Abramowitz et al. 2010). The results suggested that re-appraisal strategy was negative
associated with Germs Dimension and positively associated with Thoughts Dimension of
OCD. It is suggested that for the use of different types of emotion regulation strategy vary
with the nature of psychopathology in the patients with OCD.
Keywords: OCD, CBT, Emotion Regulation, Negative Emotions
Heightened negative emotions specifically anxiety, fear and sadness accompany
psychopathology in patients with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) (Yap et al., 2012).
Empirical observations suggest bi-directionality in the relationship between OCD
psychopathology and negative emotions, i.e. experiences that elicit negative emotions
aggravate the symptoms, also the symptoms intensify negative emotions. Many persons with
OCD develop secondary depression. The manners in which the distressing emotions are
handled can affect the overall psychopathology as well as the sense of control and wellbeing.
Gratz and Roemer (2004) suggested that the emotion regulation difficulties may result from
multiple deficits which include poor understanding and awareness of emotions, poor
acceptance of negative emotional experiences, difficulties in controlling impulses, lack of
flexibility in adopting suitable emotion regulation strategy etc. Studies (Allen & Barlow,
2009; Cristea et al. 2013; Twohig et al., 2010) further suggest that avoidance of emotions
play a key role in psychological disorders.
1
M.D., Director, Institute of Mental Health and Hospital, Agra-282002 India
2
Ph.D., Research Officer, Institute of Mental Health and Hospital, Agra-282002 India
3
Ph.D., Senior Clinical Psychologist, Institute of Mental Health and Hospital, Agra-282002 India
*Responding Author
Received: August 27, 2019; Revision Received: December 12, 2019; Accepted: December 25, 2019