Join us at the Online OCD Conference 2026 hosted by OCD SoCal!

Supporting Parents of Youth with OCD: An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Approach for Clinicians and Families

This interactive workshop introduces Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) as an approach for supporting parents of youth with OCD, offering both an evidence-based clinical framework for practitioners and practical strategies parents can use at home.  

The workshop will open with a brief research overview of the role of parenting factors in pediatric OCD and related disorders (e.g., modeling anxious responding, accommodation of children’s avoidance and compulsions), as well as the limitations of child-focused psychotherapies for these conditions. Using case examples and experiential exercises, participants will learn and practice ways to target the core ACT psychological inflexibility processes that play a role in ritual accommodation and other parent behaviors that inadvertently serve to maintain the OCD cycle in youth. Presenters will demonstrate the implementation of ACT to promote behavioral flexibility, values-aligned choices, and autonomy support in parents to enhance the parent-child relationship and outcomes for youth with OCD.  

Clinicians will receive practical guidance for delivering ACT to parents of anxious children (Raftery-Helmer et al., 2024, 2026), while parents will gain concrete tools and a new lens for navigating their child's OCD with less reactivity and more confidence.