Study Information Sheet: Memory, Thinking Skills and Obsessive-Compulsive Experiences

We would like to invite you to take part in a research study that aims to investigate the relationships between Obsessive-Compulsive experiences and various types of memory and thinking skills.  This will hopefully lead to better understanding of these experiences and could therefore help improve treatment options.

Who has been asked to take part?

This study will be asking people who feel they have experienced Obsessive-Compulsive urges to take part.  Examples of these experiences might include:

• Feeling you need to repeatedly wash your hands or clean a part of your house.
• Feeling like you repeatedly need to check that you did something, such as locking the door or turning the oven off.
• Feeling you need to repeat a phrase or count in a certain way in your head.

There are lots of types of these urges and behaviours, so we would still be interested in you taking part, even if your experiences are different. 

What will I have to do?

The study involves only one session lasting approximately 60 minutes and will be conducted in a private room here at the University of Leeds.

The session itself is comprised of several different tasks and questionnaires.  The questionnaires used are to look at any experiences of anxiety and urges to perform behaviours you may have had. The tasks we would like you to do are carried out on a computer, and require you to use different types of memory skills. 

If you decide to take part then a suitable time and date to take part in the study will be arranged with you.

Who is organising and funding the study?

This study is being conducted by researchers belonging to the Leeds Memory Group and the Academic Unit of Psychiatry, both at The University of Leeds.  The researchers supervising this project have experience of this type of research and all researchers taking part in the study have undergone training before doing so. 

If you would like to take part in the study please contact me using the details below, and further information will be provided to you. If you decided to take part you would be free to withdraw from the study at any time, without giving a reason.

Thanks for your time.

Contact:

Richard Etches
Institute of Psychological Sciences
The University of Leeds
LS2 9JT
Tel: 0113 3436692         
Email: R.B.Etches@Leeds.ac.uk