SOCAD Practice

OCD is a complicated condition, which my son has been struggling with for quite a few years. Battling it can be challenging and success is not certainly guaranteed. A lot depends on the individual's uptake and consistency, which is not always there, especially with teenagers. Despite this, we have definitely seen a substantial improvement in my son's condition when working with Dr Crino. Dr Crino's intelligence, persistency and him sharing his experiences where relevant definitely helped to get some traction in my son's OCD treatment. Unfortunately, my son's OCD is not fully gone yet, and we totally understand that this is a complex condition that may require a long time and many therapeutic iterations, though most important is that we now have hope and know particular practices that can help working with it.

Following my initial consultation, I’ve left feeling dissatisfied and unfulfilled regarding the time I invested. Given his age, while I may be able to understand a cultural or linguistic barrier preventing us from forming a healthy patient-psychologist chemistry, his lack of empathy for my experiences in conjunction with his tonal aggressiveness left me feeling unwelcome and made to feel inferior. Following on from my previous comment, in mentioning my partner’s pronouns, Dr. Crino expressed confusion at the prospect of a non-binary pronoun and proceeded to refer to them with he/him/his pronouns. While this may not be an issue for many, it was disrespectful and indicated a lack of respect and/or wilful ignorance. Lastly, the lack of understanding and flexibility Dr. Crino offered me regarding my past experiences and inputs into our session was made evident when he failed to assuage any concerns I had about the plan he had developed, and responded in a way that I can only describe as defensive. Overall, I do not recommend seeking resources at this clinic, especially if you are a young person, and would suggest you find the help and respect you deserve elsewhere.

It has taken me a long time to write this review mainly because I haven’t been able to function. My nights have turned into ‘day’ and my days are ‘night’. OCD is a debilitating condition as I have come to learn as of the last 3.5 years.I noticed symptoms in late 2016 and was advised by my GP to see Dr. Crino of SOCAD Practice. I battle contamination OCD – excessive cleaning, fear of bodily waste, toilets, bins, dog poo, soiled nappies etc. Given I had never had any mental health issues before I did not know what to expect of a psychologist. There was no psychoeducation on OCD from Dr. Crino. I struggled then and still do with what I now know as intrusive thoughts but we didn’t discuss any of that. There wasn’t any itemizing or listing my fears in order of hierarchy. We did not grade tasks for Exposure Therapy. If I said I was struggling with a task I was told to do the opposite of the urge which I knew I should do but couldn’t do the needful. I wasn’t aware of the models of treatment and so even if the tasks were extremely difficult I thought I had to tackle them. I later realized it was because I was exposing myself to tasks that were on the high end of the hierarchy scale I kept failing at therapy. Early on in treatment I was asked to bring in an item of footwear that was ‘contaminated’. This was so high on the hierarchy list that I could not bring myself to get to the appointment and missed 2 appointments out of anxiety and at the third attempt though late I went in to explain my problem and I was threatened that if I missed another appointment I would not be seen again. I wore those shoes briefly in therapy but never once after. There were other instances that were similar in that the Exposure tasks were too high on the distress scale and hence I ritualized after the appointment which defeated the whole purpose. Dr. Crino informed me of a treatment method in the U.S. wherein a patient was made to walk around with soiled toilet paper in their pocket to ‘habituate’ them. I was threatened that this would be my fate. Needless to say I was terribly distressed on hearing this. Given all the above it’s obvious that I wasn’t improving much. I was told by Dr. Crino a few times that I would be battling OCD well into the future even after he passed away. This left me despondent. I stopped seeing him after 10 months of attempting to recover. I wasn’t impressed with the clinic either. It looked like a converted balcony with hardly any room to move. Also on 2 ocassions my file was misplaced.It was only when I started seeing another psychologist a month later that I learnt about hierarchies. She asked me to list my fears and scale them from 10 to 100. When I asked her to explain this she was surprised I hadn’t been through it before and requested my permission to speak to Dr. Crino about this. I don’t know if she did as I moved residence and didn’t see her again.8 months later as my condition worsened I had 2 clinical admissions back to back. In total a 13 week period of in-patient treatment. It was ONLY in The Melbourne Clinic in their OCD program that I actually learned about OCD and why I felt the way I did and how to work through and manage the condition and associated anxiety. When I rang Dr. Crino from Melbourne to enquire why he hadn’t recommended The Melbourne Clinic when I was seeing him if he thought I wasn’t improving his first word to me on hearing that I was an in-patient was ‘Congratulations’.It’s been a long slow road to recovery... my journey continues. I wish I was informed about other clinical help right at the start. It might have saved me a lot of time and I might have kept my job.There isn’t much help out there for this disorder unfortunately. Information is limited. It took a lot of research, reading, talking to other professionals and patients to get the kind of help I need.If I could write a review without assigning a ‘star’ that would be my choice however Google does not offer that option. I wish you all the best in your journey to recovery. Keep the Faith!