NOCD is a telehealth platform designed specifically to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). It connects people with licensed therapists who specialize in a form of therapy called Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), which is considered the most effective treatment for OCD. The platform operates through a HIPAA-compliant app that offers live video therapy sessions, between-session messaging, peer support, and therapeutic tools. It serves children, adolescents, and adults across all 50 U.S. states.
How NOCD Therapy Works
NOCD’s core treatment is built around ERP, a structured approach where you gradually confront the thoughts, images, or situations that trigger your obsessions while practicing not performing the compulsive behaviors that usually follow. The idea is straightforward: when you sit with the anxiety instead of responding to it with a ritual or avoidance, your brain eventually stops treating the trigger as a threat. That natural drop in anxiety over repeated exposures is called habituation.
Your therapist develops a personalized plan for these exposures and coaches you through each one during live video sessions. Over time, you learn to run your own ERP exercises outside of sessions. NOCD reports that its ERP model has been shown to reduce OCD severity significantly in less than 10 weeks, on average.
What Happens Between Sessions
A major part of NOCD’s model is what happens when you’re not in a therapy session. Through the app, you can message your therapist, access therapeutic tools, and connect with an online peer community. NOCD also assigns “Member Advocates,” peer supporters who reach out from the moment you schedule your first session. These advocates serve as a go-to resource for questions and concerns, and they’re available to talk between sessions, which is often when managing OCD feels hardest.
Therapist Training and Qualifications
NOCD’s hiring process is notably selective. Every therapist must hold a master’s or doctoral degree and an active state license. Beyond credentials, candidates are evaluated on how they respond to the taboo intrusive thoughts that people with OCD commonly experience, things like violent, sexual, or religious obsessions. If an interviewer detects any hint of bias or stigma, the candidate is immediately disqualified. A separate clinical leader then reviews a transcript of the full interview as an additional quality check.
Candidates who pass enter a three-month training program where they spend hundreds of hours learning from NOCD’s in-house clinical experts. The curriculum covers accurate OCD diagnosis across all subtypes, effective delivery of ERP therapy, treatment of co-occurring conditions like depression and anxiety disorders, and how to tailor care to a person’s life stage and cultural background. Before seeing patients, trainees must pass multiple exams and demonstrate their skills in mock therapy sessions with clinical leaders.
Even after being cleared to treat members, therapists are required to attend ongoing consultation groups where they review diagnoses and treatment approaches with senior clinicians. NOCD’s credentialing process is accredited by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA).
OCD Subtypes and Related Conditions
OCD doesn’t look the same in everyone. NOCD therapists are trained to work with a wide range of OCD themes, including contamination fears, sexual or violent intrusive thoughts, religious obsessions (sometimes called scrupulosity), existential OCD, “just right” OCD, and relationship-based obsessions. Many people with OCD don’t realize their symptoms fall under the diagnosis because the popular image of OCD, hand-washing and checking locks, represents only a fraction of how the disorder presents.
OCD also frequently co-occurs with other conditions. Anxiety disorders, major depression, ADHD, eating disorders, and autism spectrum disorder all show up alongside OCD at higher-than-average rates. Related conditions that fall in the same diagnostic category include body dysmorphic disorder, hoarding disorder, hair-pulling (trichotillomania), and skin-picking disorder. NOCD’s training program specifically prepares therapists to assess and address these overlapping conditions, not just the OCD itself.
Insurance and Accessibility
One of the biggest barriers to OCD treatment is access. ERP-trained therapists are relatively rare in many parts of the country, and in-person specialists can have long wait lists. NOCD addresses this by operating entirely through telehealth, which removes geographic limitations.
The platform accepts major insurance plans in all 50 states. The list of in-network partners is extensive: Aetna, Anthem, Blue Cross Blue Shield (across many state-specific plans), Cigna, Kaiser Permanente, United Healthcare/Optum, Oscar Health, Tufts, Harvard Pilgrim, Priority Health, and dozens of others. Coverage through government employee programs like GEHA and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Federal Employee Program is also available. If you’re unsure whether your plan is covered, NOCD’s website maintains a full, searchable list of accepted providers.
Who NOCD Is Designed For
NOCD is built for anyone who suspects they have OCD or has already been diagnosed and wants specialized treatment. It serves children, adolescents, and adults. The platform is particularly useful for people who don’t have access to a local ERP specialist, who have a subtype of OCD that general therapists may not recognize, or who need the flexibility of virtual sessions. Because OCD is widely misunderstood and often misdiagnosed, even people unsure of their diagnosis can start with NOCD’s intake process, where trained clinicians assess whether OCD is the right fit before beginning treatment.