Unpacking OCD with Dr. Patrick McGrath

**Drew Pinsky** (0:10)
Hey, everybody, welcome to the podcast. Appreciate you all being here. Do support the people that support us. We appreciate it, we like doing this thing, so we're gonna keep doing it if you'll support us and the people that support us. The guest today is Dr. Patrick McGrath. He's the chief clinical officer for NOCD. No CD, yes, NOCD. Getting that right. Clinical protocols, team of OCD specialists. NOCD is the world's leading provider of virtual therapy for OCD. And I think, did you reach out to me on social media or something, is that how we connected?

**Patrick McGrath** (0:41)
We've met actually when you did the IOCDF talk, actually. It was the first time you and I had a chance to meet each other.

**Drew Pinsky** (0:47)
Did we have lunch together? Is that you part of that group or we just met?

**Patrick McGrath** (0:51)
We met after the talk, yeah. I think you went to with Jeff and a few people to the lunch.

**Drew Pinsky** (0:56)
Yes, so I became, as a result, so what Dr. McGrath is talking about is this organization called the International Obsessive and Compulsive Disorders Federation, IOCDF.

**Patrick McGrath** (1:06)
Foundation, yeah.

**Drew Pinsky** (1:07)
Foundation, I beg your pardon. Their website is iocdf.org.
I was just, first of all, gobsmacked by what a wonderful group of clinicians and the resources you guys were providing. I just was, I was all in. I've never seen quite that quality of patient, really patient-supported disease-specific kind of focus. And then when you, I forget how you reached out to me, but you did, and I was like, oh, I'm into this topic ever since I've read that group. And so thank you for being a part of that.

**Patrick McGrath** (1:48)
Of course.

**Drew Pinsky** (1:50)
And I guess I think we had to do two things to start. One is, first of all, obviously describe what NOCD is all about, what you guys are doing there. And then let's go, let's do a sort of, let's do a survey of the magnitude of the problem and how common this is and how sort of, I don't want to say ill-equipped, but not necessarily well-equipped clinicians are to deal with this, identify it and deal with it. So talk about NOCD first.

**Patrick McGrath** (2:16)
So NOCD is an online platform for the treatment of obsessive, compulsive and related disorders. So we'll work with OCD, but also body-focused repetitive behaviors like you'll see tics and hair pulling, which is trichotillomania or skin picking, which is excoriation. And we'll do evidence-based treatment for those. So we do work for OCD with exposure and response prevention therapy. We do habit reversal training for the body-focused repetitive behavior issues. We work with hoarding as well too, a cognitive behavioral therapy-based work for hoarding, which is really nice on a virtual platform. Sometimes people ask, can you do this stuff virtually? But in the old days with hoarding, I had to drive for an hour to get to someone's house. I'd spend an hour at their house. I had to drive an hour back to the office. Now I can just say, turn your camera around. So we're saving people time and money by doing this in a virtual environment. It works really well.

**Drew Pinsky** (3:05)
I am amazed at how much benefit. One of the extraordinary side effects of COVID was the range of uses and the benefits of Zoom interventions. Yes, I am just so thrilled with that. obviously, on the addiction side, the Zoom meetings have been a game changer. I've noticed, particularly on the more shame-based kinds of illnesses, many passive change and obviously things like hair pulling and these hoarding and things people feel ashamed of, this is again in that category and so you can go get help.
I don't know how you guys feel about this, but people go to meetings and things like that. They leave their camera off sometimes. And so it just would get them in the room is the important thing.

**Patrick McGrath** (3:52)
Yeah. And even for people like that, we really encourage that. We see that as part of the exposure and response prevention therapy piece of it. If you don't want to look at me, okay, look to the side, but I want to see you. I want to be involved with you. I want you in the experience of this. And the other beauty of it is that, let's say that someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder has a fear, what if I left my stove on?
I'm going to just grab my laptop, I'm going to go to my stove, and we're going to do stove work together. So I will ask you to leave your stove on, and I'm going to turn mine on. I'll turn the camera, show you. Look, my stove's on too. If your house is going to burn down, my house is going to burn down as well.