The Obsessive Compulsive Drinking Scale: A Self‐Rated Instrument for the Quantification of Thoughts about Alcohol and Drinking Behavior

Abstract

It has been suggested that a crucial dimension of alcohol "craving" includes the concept of both obsessive thoughts about alcohol use and compulsive behaviors toward drinking. An interview-based rating scale, the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale-heavy drinkers (YBOCS-hd), has been found useful in quantifying this concept in alcohol-dependent individuals. A self-rating scale, the Obsessive Compulsive Drinking Scale (OCDS) has been developed by us as a modification of the YBOCS-hd. The YBOCS-hd showed excellent interrater reliability in our hands. The correlation between the YBOCS-hd and the OCDS total scores obtained on 60 alcohol-dependent individuals was 0.83. The test-retest correlation for the OCDS total score was 0.96, and the obsessive and compulsive subscales test-retest correlations were 0.94 and 0.86, respectively. The internal consistency of the items in the OCDS was high (0.86) and did not improve significantly with removal of individual items. The shared variance between the OCDS scores and alcohol consumption during the period of evaluation was only approximately 20%, indicating that the dimension measured by the scale was somewhat independent of actual drinking. As such, it might act as an independent measure of the "state of illness" for alcohol-dependent individuals. When used during a prospective 12-week treatment research study, initial results indicate that the OCDS seems to validly measure a dimension of alcohol dependence, because it decreased from baseline during alcohol reduction and increased in relationship to relapse drinking.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Differential Brain Activity in Alcoholics and Social Drinkers to Alcohol Cues: Relationship to Craving

“…Modell et al (1990) developed a model of craving for alcohol based on the similarity of the compulsions associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and the desire to drink described by alcoholics. Investigators have noted that some aspects of craving resemble obsessive and compulsive phenomenon (Anton et al, 1995;Anton, 1999;Modell et al, 1990), including both urges and the inability to resist these urges. Dysfunction in a circuit involving the striato-thalamocortical loop may underlie this poor control of urges to drink (Anton et al, 1995;Volkow and Fowler, 2000).…”

“…Investigators have noted that some aspects of craving resemble obsessive and compulsive phenomenon (Anton et al, 1995;Anton, 1999;Modell et al, 1990), including both urges and the inability to resist these urges. Dysfunction in a circuit involving the striato-thalamocortical loop may underlie this poor control of urges to drink (Anton et al, 1995;Volkow and Fowler, 2000). As such, dysfunction in the orbitofrontal cortex might be involved in craving for alcohol, much like it is in OCD.…”

On the predictive validity of automatically activated approach/avoidance tendencies in abstaining alcohol-dependent patients

“…As can be seen in Table 1, daily alcohol consumption was much higher in the patient group than in control group. We also administered the Alcohol Expectancy Questionnaire (AEQ), a measure of the extent to which an individual beliefs that alcohol consumption will serve certain functions or result in desirable consequences (Brown et al, 1987;Vautier and Moncany, 2008) and the Obsessive Compulsive Drinking Scale (OCDS), a questionnaire that measures cognitive aspects of alcohol craving (Ansseau et al, 2000;Anton et al, 1995Anton et al, , 1996. In comparison to participants from the control group, abstaining alcohol-dependent patients experienced much more alcohol craving and expected more desirable consequences after alcohol consumption (see Table 1).…”

A avaliação do craving em alcoolistas na síndrome de abstinência

“…O último instrumento do protocolo deste estudo foi a Escala para Avaliar o Craving (Araújo, 2002), construída e testada em um estudo piloto, tendo este processo de construção e validação inicial se fundamentado na literatura relacionada a questionários de avaliação deste construto (Anton, Moak & Latham, 1995;Beck et al, 1999;Flannery, Volpicelli & Pettinati, 1999;Marques & Seibel, 2001). A produção preliminar foi avaliada por profissionais especialistas em dependência química e, após as correções, o instrumento foi aplicado em dez pacientes.…”