Presented by Dr Maureen Whittal and Professor Roz Shafran

About the event

This in-person workshop has been organised by the North West Wales Branch. Please note: this event is in-person attendance only, there isn’t the option to view online or watch a recording afterwards.

A certificate of attendance will be issued for 6 hours CPD. All hours can be counted as skills development.

Please read the Events Cancellation Policy before booking your place. 

Registration closes – Thursday 17 September. Places are limited though, so book early to avoid disappointment!

Synopsis

OCD can be a challenging disorder to treat owing to the heterogeneous symptom presentation and comorbidity. Cognitive treatments for OCD were introduced 30+ years ago as an alternative to prolonged exposure and response prevention. They focus on the appraisals of unwanted intrusions as meaning that the person is “mad, bad, or dangerous”.

This workshop will focus on cognitive behavioural approaches for various OCD presentations (e.g., contact and mental contamination, checking, primary obsessions, mental rituals, and scrupulosity). The strategies to accomplish these goals will be illustrated through the use of surveys, behavioural and contrast experiments, testing the power of thought, creating distance from the intrusion, reducing concealment and accepting uncertainty.

Learning Outcomes

– To understand the cognitive-behavioural model of OCD
– To conceptualize heterogeneous presentations within the behavioural model and reference will be made to helping folk who experience OCD who fall outside of the Mean & Median population.
– To identify treatment strategies that address appraisals of unwanted intrusive thoughts

About the speakers

Dr Maureen L. Whittal is the lead author of ‘The OCD Handbook: A Cognitive Behavioral Approach’ (2026, Guilford Press). She has done clinical and research work in obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety disorders for over 30 years. She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1995 from West Virginia University. Dr Whittal completed her residency training at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School and a fellowship at Stanford University School of Medicine before returning to Canada in 1996. She completed a second fellowship in the UBC Department of Psychiatry. From 1998 to 2009 she was the Manager and Director of the UBC Anxiety Disorders Clinic.

Dr Whittal is currently Clinical Associate Professor in the UBC Department of Psychiatry, is Adjunct Faculty in the UBC Department of Psychology and also on the teaching faculty for the International OCD Foundation. She also holds a Diplomate in CBT with the American Board of Professional Psychology, and is certified by the Canadian Association of Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies. Dr Whittal is internationally known for her work in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). She ran 3 treatment trials in OCD and has published numerous research articles and chapters. Dr Whittal has also lectured and provided OCD workshops to professionals across North America, the United Kingdom, Australia and Europe.

Professor Roz Shafran is Emeritus Professor of Translational Psychology at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Fellow of the British Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy. She graduated from Oxford University in 1991 and received her PhD from the Institute of Psychiatry, London in 1995. Professor Shafran’s formative years were spent with Jack Rachman at UBC where she saw first-hand the power of cognitive behaviour therapy for OCD. Her work has focused on the development, evaluation and dissemination of treatments for perfectionism, OCD, eating disorders and young people with chronic illness. She has published over 400 research papers and has lectured and provided OCD workshops to clinicians globally. She is a Patron of OCD-UK.