Counselors are tasked with being knowledgeable about assessing and treating a broad range of mental health issues. There has been an overall rise in mental health symptoms in individuals during the current COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the increased use of online internet forums as part of help-seeking behaviors. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) received attention during this time due to its close connection to fears of contamination and contracting an illness. However, research on OCD has found that
there are several different symptom dimensions and that there are heterogeneous manifestations of obsessions and compulsions. A model of OCD that separates obsessions into autogenous and reactive types has been proposed in order to differentiate between their clinical features. Understanding the differences of these subtypes of obsessions can be beneficial to counselors when working with clients with OCD. This dissertation has two research arms; Research Arm A looked at the psychological and linguistic variables use in anonymous online posts of individuals with OCD, and Research Arm B looked at the collocates of
keywords in the autogenous and reactive corpuses. Research Arm A used natural language processing software to look at the differences in 4 linguistic variables and 15 psychological variables in the autogenous and reactive corpuses. A log likelihood ratio compared the usage rates of these variables, and effect sizes were calculated to identify the variables that most differentiated the two corpuses. Research arm B used a collocation study method to look at the words and word networks that most differentiated the
two types of obsessions. The results of these studies show a delineation between the subtypes of obsessions. The results of research arm A showed different psychological variables having large effect sizes in the two different corpuses. The LIWC variables “sexual” and “insight” in the autogenous corpus and “health” and “body” in the reactive corpus had the largest effect sizes. First person singular and third person singular had larger effect sizes in the autogenous corpus. In research arm B, the keywords sexual
and POCD had the strongest keyness in the autogenous corpus while contamination and checking had the strongest keyness in the reactive corpus. These results indicate the clinical importance of training counselors about the heterogeneity of the symptoms of OCD, as research has shown that many individuals do not seek out help due to fears of being inaccurately assessed, particularly for those with obsessions with a sexual theme. These results also have implications for future research, as there is a lack of research about each subtype of OCD from a corpus linguistic approach
