Help center

OCD Quest User Guide & How-To

A practical guide for children, parents, guardians, and administrators.

Important: OCD Quest helps families organize information and communicate between appointments. It does not diagnose, provide emergency monitoring, or replace professional care. For immediate safety concerns, contact local emergency or crisis services.

Getting startedSign in and understand account roles. Child guideCheck-ins, diary, goals, tools, and messages. Parent guideReview activity, manage support, and create reports. Privacy & safetySharing, passwords, backups, and urgent help.

Getting started

Open OCD Quest and select Enter OCD Quest.
Enter your private username and password. Child accounts may use a PIN configured by a parent.
The app opens the dashboard for your role: child, parent, or administrator.
Use Settings to update your account, picture, password, and available preferences.
Always use Log out on a shared device.

If you cannot sign in

Check spelling and capitalization, then try again carefully.
Use Forgot username? or Forgot password? when a recovery email is configured.
Ask a parent or administrator for help if the account is locked or has no recovery email.

Child guide

Complete check-ins

Right Now: record mood, how loud OCD feels, a stressor, and an optional note.
Last Night: record sleep, dreams, and an overnight note.
Today: reflect on activities, concerns, and how the day went.

Use the sharing checkbox when shown to control whether a parent can read a note. Ratings do not need to be perfect; choose the answer that feels closest.

Use the other tools

OCD thoughts and compulsions: keep a simple list of patterns and optionally count compulsions without trying to count perfectly.
Diary: write private entries or entries shared with a parent.
Goals: work on family goals and earn reward points when enabled.
Points Store: spend earned points or request a new reward for a parent to approve.
Support messages: ask a linked parent for company, encouragement, or practical support.
OCD character: give OCD a separate character and practice what you want to say back.
History and trends: review previous check-ins and patterns over time.

Parent and guardian guide

Set up the family

Open Manage family to create a child account or request access to an existing child.
If more than one child is linked, use Viewing child before making changes.
Review connected parents and remove access that is no longer appropriate.

Support day-to-day use

Check-ins and reports: choose Right Now, Last Night, or Today from three dedicated buttons. Each button displays the most recent check-in date and time and opens that type's complete history.
Support messages: read and respond to messages from the child.
Care notes: keep parent observations and therapist-related notes organized.
Goals: create goals, attach rewards, and award points.
Points Store: create rewards, review purchases, and mark items delivered.
Store requests: assign a point value and approve a requested reward, or reject it. Approved requests are removed from the request page and added to the store.
OCD thoughts and compulsions: help maintain lists and record rough compulsion counts without encouraging repeated checking.
Streak settings: choose which daily actions count toward a streak and manage rewards.

Create a therapist report

Open Check-ins and reports, then choose Create therapist report.
Select the child and a 7-day or 30-day period.
Review the report before printing, saving, or sharing it.
Share only through a secure method agreed upon with the therapist.

Email notifications

In Settings, add a recovery email and choose which child activities should send notifications. An administrator must configure the outgoing email service before messages can be delivered.

Administrator guide

Create and manage family or administrator accounts. Family accounts are grouped by assignment into expandable units and display the latest recorded access time.
Use Interactive demo to enable or disable the realistic parent/child product tour and review anonymous usage estimates. Demo pages follow normal navigation and workflows but never create account data.
Assign the correct parents to each child and deactivate accounts that should no longer sign in.
Configure and test outgoing email before relying on recovery or notification messages.
Use strong, unique administrator credentials and keep application secrets outside the source repository.
Back up the persistent Docker data volume before upgrades, migrations, or resets.

Privacy, sharing, and safety

Only linked parents and authorized administrators should have access to a child's information.
Keep usernames, passwords, recovery codes, exports, and therapist reports private.
Shared diary entries and checked-in notes may be visible to linked parents; private entries should remain private within the app's access rules.
OCD Quest is not an emergency alert system. Do not wait for an app notification when someone may be in immediate danger.
Parents and administrators should maintain tested backups of the database and uploaded files.

Quick troubleshooting

A page shows the wrong child: Return to the parent dashboard and change the Viewing child selection.
An email did not arrive: Confirm the account email, notification preference, administrator email configuration, and spam folder.
A reward request disappeared: Approved requests move into the Points Store. Check the child's available store items.
Information looks out of date: Refresh the page and confirm you are viewing the correct child. Sign out and back in if necessary.
A password or PIN is exposed: Change it immediately. An administrator should also rotate affected application secrets when appropriate.