How might meditation be helpful for a patient with obsessive compulsive disorder?  

Negative habits: compulsions and other unwanted behaviors. Unwanted behaviors are part of a reinforcing pattern in which a trigger activates an urge, which then compels an action, which usually produces an immediate pleasant outcome followed by a later feeling of stressful self-criticism, judgment,...

Stepping outside of identifying with thoughts via meditation, mindfulness, prayerful state, artistic absorption, etc, creates distancing, which is the key first step to be a bit more free from the autocracy of obsessions and the need to compulsively attempt to reduce the accompanying anxiety.

Since the internal increase in anxiety related to the obsession/compulsion pattern is related to some degree to overactivity of the sympathetic nervous system response, the ability for regular meditation practice to increase parasympathetic drive could, over time and with practice, reduce the intens...