A 30-year-old woman with obsessive-compulsive disorder reports that intrusive thoughts about contamination prompt repeated handwashing rituals lasting hours each day. Her therapist begins a treatment in which she touches a doorknob and refrains from washing her hands, gradually working up a hierarchy of feared situations.
This treatment is best identified as:
- Acheck_circle
Exposure and response prevention (ERP)
- B
Free association
- C
Electroconvulsive therapy
- D
Token economy
Explanation
ERP exposes patients to obsessional triggers while preventing the compulsive ritual, allowing extinction of the anxiety-compulsion cycle. The other options describe psychoanalytic, operant, and biomedical interventions unrelated to this protocol.