Dr Vicky Simkin


Postgraduate Research Student

Research

Research interests

Research projects

Publications

Veale, D., Simkin, V., Orme, K., Grant, N. (2021) Defining reliable change, treatment response and remission on the Florida Obsessive Compulsive Inventory

Response in the treatment of OCD has been defined by an international consensus as ≥35% reduction on a clinician rated interview, the Yale-Brown Obsessive Scale (Y– BOCS). Remission is defined as a score of ≤12 on the Y-BOCS. However, clinicians do not routinely use an observer rated scale for measuring outcomes as this requires training as well as resources to administer it. The Florida Obsessive Compulsive Inventory (FOCI) is a 5 item self-report scale that can be used for measuring change during treatment. Scores from a clinical service were used to calculate the cut-off scores for response and remission compared to the Y-BOCS and evaluated using receiver operating curves (ROC) analysis. We found that a reduction of 25% on the FOCI best corresponded to a reduction on the Y-BOCS of 35%. A score ≤7 on the FOCI at post-treatment was the optimal cut-off in determining full or partial remission from OCD. A reliable improvement was found to be a score of 6. This may assist clinicians in treatment evaluation and enable comparisons with results from clinical trials, when the Y-BOCS is not available. In a separate out-patient sample we found that the FOCI was just as sensitive to change with the same effect size as the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory (OCI) and Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory-Revised (OCI-R). The FOCI imposes significantly less burden on clients, being only 5 items, and should be adopted more widely as an outcome measure in OCD.