Imagery can be a powerful healing agent. Meditation can guide people to think about images that evoke positive feelings, achieve mental stillness, and release tension in the body. Research supports the therapeutic use of guided imagery, which is available outside of clinical environments, through fitness, yoga and relaxation programs. However, when horrific shameful images show up unannounced, unwanted, and repeatedly over the course of a day they are anything but healing. Such intrusive images are an important and under researched characteristic of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
Brenda Chiang is a student in the University of Waterloo’s leading scientist practitioner Ph.D. program in Clinical Psychology. Her research is focusing on an under-researched topic: the role that image-based obsessions have on OCD.
EENet’s latest Student Spotlight profiles Brenda’s research. Student Spotlights are brief profiles of up-and-coming student researchers.