Carolyn Rodriguez, MD, PhD | Taming the Unquiet Mind: Next Frontiers in OCD Treatment and Research

Why It Matters

Accelerating diagnosis and delivering rapid‑acting therapies could cut years of suffering for millions with OCD, while opening new avenues for neuroscience‑driven mental‑health interventions.

Key Takeaways

• OCD treatment delays average 14‑17 years from onset to care.
• Rapid‑acting ketamine shows symptom relief within an hour for OCD.
• Stanford's Human Neuros circuitry program leverages SEEG during epilepsy monitoring.
• Digital phenotyping aims to detect OCD early via messaging patterns.
• Exposure and response prevention remains first‑line but many patients avoid it.

Summary

In a Stanford‑hosted talk, associate dean Carolyn Rodriguez outlined the next frontiers in obsessive‑compulsive disorder research, emphasizing the need to shorten the 14‑ to 17‑year gap between symptom onset and evidence‑based care.

Rodriguez highlighted three pillars of her lab’s work: a human neuros‑circuitry platform that captures intracranial SEEG data from epilepsy patients, digital‑mental‑health efforts that mine messaging footprints for early OCD signals, and rapid‑acting pharmacologic trials targeting the glutamate system.

She illustrated the patient experience with John Green’s “thought‑spiral” metaphor and presented a case report where a low‑dose IV ketamine infusion cut Yale‑Brown scores from 10 to 2 within an hour, a finding later confirmed in a randomized controlled trial showing sustained reduction for seven days.

These advances suggest that precision neurophysiology and glutamate‑modulating agents could transform OCD treatment from a slow, exposure‑heavy paradigm to one that delivers swift symptom relief, potentially reshaping clinical guidelines and reducing long‑term disability.

Original Description

Carolyn Rodriguez, MD, PhD

Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Stanford School of Medicine

Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Director, OCD Research Lab

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is common, disabling, and severely underdiagnosed. Standard first-line treatments for OCD may not provide sufficient relief of OCD symptoms for all those seeking care; thus, there is an urgent need for alternative treatments. Learn how Dr. Rodriguez’s lab is transforming the landscape of diagnosis and treatment through two groundbreaking approaches—first, by leveraging artificial intelligence to enable earlier, more accurate detection of OCD; and second, by pioneering the use of rapid-acting therapeutics that target specific brain circuits, offering symptom relief within hours rather than weeks.

Part of Stanford Medicine Alumni Day 2026.