Does Magical Thinking Improve across Treatment for Obsessive-compulsive Disorder?
The present study investigated whether MI is a mechanism for change in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The Magical Ideation scale (MI), the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory – Short Version (OCI-SV) and the Padua Inventory were completed by 34 obsessive-compulsive patients pre- and post cognitive-behavioural treatment. Treatment did not target magical styles of thinking. Significant improvements on all three measures of obsessive-compulsive symptoms were demonstrated by t tests over the course of treatment. Improvement in magical thinking was also shown to be significant in t test results. In support of the hypothesis, correlations between MI improvement and improvement on the obsessive-compulsive symptom scales were significant (at a level of .05) suggesting that there is an association between improvement in magical thinking and improvement in obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Notably, a significant negative correlation was obtained between prescores on MI and change
