WPIC’s Child and Adolescent Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Clinic is Featured in
the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Read the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
is an anxiety disorder characterized by recurrent, unwanted thoughts and/or repetitive behaviors. While OCD can arise at any time during a person’s life, it frequently emerges during childhood and adolescence.
Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic offers an intensive outpatient treatment program (IOP) for children and adolescents with OCD. The program is one of only a few such programs in the United States and the only program in the region to provide specialized treatment services to children diagnosed with OCD.
About WPIC
Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic (WPIC) is considered to be one of the nation’s foremost university-based psychiatric care facilities and one of the world’s leading centers for research and treatment of mental health disorders. WPIC houses the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and is the flagship of UPMC Behavioral Health, the psychiatric specialty division of the University of Pittsburgh
Medical Center.
Named among the best psychiatric hospitals in the country by U.S. News & World Report, WPIC has more than 60 outpatient programs and 289 licensed inpatient beds, serving individuals across the lifespan, from young children to aging adults. Each year, more than 40,000 individuals receive care through inpatient and outpatient clinical programs at WPIC.
Its research programs are unsurpassed, with researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine’s department of psychiatry receiving more federal funding for behavioral health and addiction research than any other institution in the nation. In 2007, the department received more than $72 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health, ranking it first in funding among all psychiatry departments, a distinction the department has earned for more than a decade. Approximately 80 percent of this funding supports clinical research projects, many of which directly benefit individuals who receive services at WPIC or through UPMCBehavioral Health.
WPIC currently houses six federally funded Centers of Excellence: the Mental Health Intervention Center for Mood and Anxiety Disorders, the Conte Center for the Neuroscience of Mental Disorders, the Advanced Center for Intervention and Services Research for Late-Life Mood Disorders, the Pittsburgh Mind/Body Center, the Affect Regulation and Adolescent Brain Center and the Advanced Center for Intervention and Services Research for Early Onset Mood and Anxiety Disorders. Other specialty areas include: Alzheimer’s disease, sleep and sleep disorders, schizophrenia, autism, suicide and eating disorders.
WPIC offers a number of educational and training programs. For professionals, these programs include internship, residency, fellowship and post-doctoral research programs. For the public, outreach programs include crisis, disaster and bioterrorism preparedness training, intimate partner violence training, and school-based training to aid teachers and counselors in recognizing and helping students at risk for mental illness
and suicide.