Comparing effects of detached mindfulness and cognitive restructuring in obsessive‐compulsive disorder using ecological momentary assessment

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) has been shown to be a valid and sensitive measure of treatment effects in obsessive‐compulsive disorder (OCD). As part of a clinical trial, this EMA study deals with a comparison of two treatment conditions, that is, cognitive restructuring (CR) and detached mindfulness (DM). EMA data from n = 39 OCD patients were available from a randomized clinical trial on the effectiveness of CR and DM. Smartphone‐based EMA sampling spread over 4 days each before and after treatment, with 10 random prompts per day and a 2‐week intervention of either CR or DM. We tracked CR strategies (e.g., questioning an appraisal by re‐evaluating risk), DM strategies (e.g., allowing one's thoughts to come and go), and application of newly learned strategies during Post‐Treatment EMA. Although there was a trend towards DM strategies being applied more often during Pre‐Treatment EMA than CR strategies, we did not find differences during Post‐Treatment EMA between CR and DM regarding frequency or difficulty of application and experienced relief. As expected, we found a clear pre‐post increase for all CR and DM behaviours except for one DM item. However, we did not find a treatment‐specific increase of CR and DM behaviours; that is, both interventions equally well promoted a seemingly general treatment effect. Despite the ecological validity of EMA, however, social desirability effects cannot be ruled out, so that this conclusion must be handled cautiously. Further research is needed to replicate and generalize our results.