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Dealing with obsessive-compulsive disorder
Dealing with obsessive-compulsive disorder
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Recommended: Dealing with obsessive-compulsive disorder
Obsessive Compulsive
Disorder or OCD affects nearly two to three percent of the U.S.
population. OCD affects both males and females, but males start to
show signs of OCD at an earlier age, between the ages of six and
fifteen, while in females it tends to occur later. “Obsessive
Compulsive Disorder.
“OCD.”http://athealth.com/athealth31.cfm?topic=22(1 April 2000). A
good example of OCD can be viewed in the movie “As Good As It Gets.”
In this movie, Jack Nicholson plays a character who uses a bar of
soap once, then throws it away, constantly checks the locks on doors
to make sure they’re locked before leaving. He must sit at the same
table, in the same restaurant and have the same waitress every day.
If his routines are changed, in any way, it causes to have an anxiety
attack. “OCD.” http://www.mayohealth.org/mayo/9809/htm/ocd.htm(29
March 2000).
Just being “quirky” or a “perfectionist” doesn’t mean someone
has OCD. Because people always get things done ahead of time, or have
weird “obsessions”, doesn’t mean that they are Obsessive Compulsive
it may be that they hold themselves to a higher standard of living.
Only when the behaviors begin to interfere with everyday living, is
it considered to be OCD.“OCD.”
http://www.mayohealth.org/mayo/9809/htm/ocd.htm(29 March 2000).
One of many causes of OCD is felt to be, an imbalance in
serotonin, which is a chemical that occurs naturally in the brain and
is believed to control the receptive behaviors. The belief is
strengthened due to the fact that medication taken to enhance the
action of serotonin appears to help the patients greatly. Childhood
ailments, such as throat infections may induce OCD, also, genetic
factors may play a role in the contraction of the disorder. A study
done at the MAYO clinic, is that, some people have a biological
predisposition to react strongly to stress, a reaction that for some
reason evokes the intrusive thoughts, anxieties and ritual
characteristics of Obsessive Compulsive Dissorder.“OCD.”
http://www.mayohealth.org/mayo/9809/htm/ocd.htm(29 March 200).
There are a lot of different treatments for OCD. One of which is
Behavior therapy. Behavior therapy helps a lot of people by exposing
them to a feared object or obsession, while not allowing the person
to do their anxiety-reducing compulsion. An example of this would be
making a person touch something that they considered to be
contaminated, but not allowing them wash their hands afterwards. This
type of treatment lasts about seven to ten weeks and has a 50 to 90
percent chance of improving the patients behavior.
Another form of treatment is medication, such as Paxil, Zoloft,
Prozac, and Luvox. Paxil, or paroxetine, is prescribed for depression
and OCD. The usual dosage is about 20 to 50 mg a day.
The New England Journal of Medicine -- February 1, 1996 -- Vol. 334, No. 5
Regina is a 20 year-old single female who is struggling to obtain her business degree at a mid-sized university. In the last two and a half years she has only received 26 credit hours. Seeing that she is having problems, her adviser along with her parents, suggested that she attend therapy. Regina is frequently having anxiety about germs and performing certain rituals in order to lessen her anxiety. In order to be comfortable in her classes, she feels she must arrive early, find a specific desk on a certain row, and thoroughly clean the desk and seat before she can be seated. Also, before she can leave her off-campus apartment in the morning, she is finding herself spending more and more time cleaning her apartment, then showering and getting dressed, and then cleaning the bathroom thoroughly. Regina also has found herself fearful of eating in restaurants and going to eat at family and friends homes. Her fear of germs is intensifying and prohibiting her from having adequate relationships. This is leaving her to feel quite isolated and lonely.
OCD is broken down into two components the obsession and the compulsion. The first component; obsession is when an individual is consistently having these reoccurring thoughts or images about a certain problem or issue in their life. For example; an individual that has OCD can have a constant thought or image about getting sick or dying from the various germs or diseases that people contract every day. So this individual goes to the extreme to make sure that they do not contract any of these germs or diseases. That is when the compulsive component begins. This is when the individual takes these extreme actions to protect themselves from whatever they have these high anxiety feelings about. So continuing using the same example; this individual will consistently clean their homes every day for several hours at a time. They tend to clean their hands several times when out in public and are very tedious about where they go and what they touch while in public. They are also very caution about how they interact with other people. They just take extra steps to protect themsel...
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is a disease that afflicts up to six million Americans, however all its characteristics are yet to be fully understood. Its causes, triggers, attributes, and variations are still unknown although effective medicines exist to treat the symptoms. OCD is a very peculiar disease as Rapoport discusses it comes in many different forms and have different symptoms yet have many similarities. One sure aspect is that it appears, or at least its symptoms do, out of the blue and is triggered either by stressful experiences or, most of the time, just appears out of nowhere. One example is a boy who's father was hard on him for being affected by the worlds "modern ways", the boy at a high school party tries LSD ( a hallucinatory drug), after that thoughts of whether his mind was dangerously affected by the drug. What seemed like completely appropriate worrying and anxiety turned into attacks of anxiety, he couldn't shake the thoughts that something was wrong with his mind. Essentially he had "his mind on his mind" constantly and that haunted his days his thought were as follows: " did the lsd do anything to my mind? The thought never went away ; instead it got more and more complicated. There must be something wrong with my mind if i am spending so much time worrying about it. Is there something wrong with my mind? Was this from the lsd? Will it ever get better?" (The boy who, J. L. Rapoport 125,126) Dr. Rapoport promptly put him on Anafranil (an anti-depressant, used for OCD, not marketed in the U.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or OCD for short, has affected numerous people; one being Jeff Bell, the author of the book Rewind, Replay, Repeat: A memoir of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. This book has much insight on OCD and touches many interesting facts that some people would never know prior to reading.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a disorder which causes people to develop an anxiety when certain obsessions or compulsions are not fulfilled. OCD can affect both children and adults with more than half of all adults with OCD stating that they experienced signs as a child. People living with OCD display many obvious signs such as opening and closing a door fifty times because they have to do it “just right”. Others exhibit extreme cleanliness and will wash their hands or take showers as often as they can because they constantly feel dirty. OCD devastates people’s social lives as they are fixated and obsessed with perfection that can take forever to achieve. However people living with OCD are often found to have an above average intelligence and typically excel at school due to their detail oriented mindset, cautious planning and patience. OCD can be caused by many different factors such as genetics or the ever changing world a...
Some symptoms of Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) are fear of germs, perfectionism, and rituals. When someone has OCD they are afraid of germs and might constantly be washing their hands or cleaning their room. Someone who suffers from OCD needs everything to be perfect and they might organize their closet by color size. Their rituals calm their anxiety. Certain rituals are things such as checking the stove a certain number of times to make sure it is off or tap their finger a number of times just because it makes them feel better. Obsessive compulsive disorder can be associated with other mental disorders that cause stress and anxiety, but it can be treated with cognitive behavioral therapy and medication.
There are a couple evident symptoms of OCD. People tend to do an action over and over again to calm their anxiety levels. They tend to not be able to control unwanted thoughts or actions, and spend minimum an hour each day on the obsessing rituals which gets in their way for daily life. Common obsessions are needs for symmetry or order, fear of germs, causing harm to other people, dirt or germs, etc. Common compulsions include constant bathing, hoarding of items, constant counting, etc. These signs can interfere with a person’s life and ruin relationships with others.
Randal initially sought a psychological assessment for the presenting problem of depression. He began by stating that he had been having a difficult time with simple tasks and was easily overwhelmed. After further questioning, Randal began to elaborate on some of the thoughts that occupied his time and led to difficulty concentrating. He was constantly absorbed in anxiety about himself, or his family, coming into contact with a microbial disease. This thought pattern led to him compulsively washing his hands, obsessively cleaning surfaces and doorknobs, and throwing out perfectly fine clothing due to fear of contamination. He went on to further state that he often avoided places due to anxiety about their cleanliness. Also, Randal explained that often just when thinking about dirt and germs, he would take a shower, as a result of feeling contaminated. When prompted, Randal intimated that this behavior has occurred for several years, but recently has begun to interrupt his day-to-day functioning.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a type of anxiety disorder that can be best characterized by the recurrent or disturbing thoughts that are labeled as obsessions. Sometime these obsessions can take on the form of intrusive images or the unwanted impulses. The compulsions can come from the repetitive or ritualized behaviors that a person feels driven to perform on a daily basis. The majority of people with the diagnosis of OCD can have both obsessions and compulsions, but most of the times about 20% have obsessions alone while 10% may have the compulsions alone (Goodman M.D., 2013) . Common types that have been illustrated in individual’s diagnoses with OCD can be characterized with concerns of contamination, safety or harm to themselves, unwanted acts of aggression, the unacceptable sexual or religious thoughts, and the need for symmetry or exactness. While some of the most common compulsion can be characterized as excessive cleaning, checking, ordering, and arranging rituals or the counting and repeating routines activities that are done sometimes on a daily basis multiple times in a day.
One kind of anxiety disorder is obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). This disease can ruin a person's life because it causes them to have repetitive thoughts and behaviors towards certain things. Life can become very difficult because this way of thinking and acting is very difficult to overcome, especially since the obsessions have no point and are stressful for the person. It begins to interfere with the person's school, work, and/or home.
The Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder What is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder? I’m sure that most everyone has seen different news shows or talk shows where you see the person washing their hands until they bleed, or go back and forth into the house to double, triple, quadruple check something. A person may walk around their house making sure everything is “in its place” and not stop until a level of perfect is reached but often perfection in their eyes is never achieved. Magazines and books need to be parallel to the table they are on and of course the table must be parallel with the rest of the furniture in the room. These are just a few examples of behaviors that are demonstrated when a person has OCD.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a disease that a lot of people suffer with in society especially young adults. While it is not a disease that is deadly, it does affect the victim in every day aspects of their life and can ultimately control their lives. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is defined by the National Institute of Mental Health as, “… a common, chronic and long-lasting disorder in which a person has uncontrollable, reoccurring thoughts (obsessions) and behaviors (compulsions) that he or she feels the urge to repeat over and over”. The thoughts that individuals have when suffering through Obsessive Compulsive Disorder cannot be restrained and really can disturb the individual. Thoughts or actions that people may have can range from worrying about daily occurrences, such as washing their hands, to having thoughts of harming people that are close to them. People tend to have these reoccurring compulsions because they believe by doing them or thinking them, they will either prevent something bad from happening or because it eliminates stress that they have. This disease can last a lifetime and can be very detrimental and disabling to how one lives their lives. Individuals can start to see signs of OCD in either late adolescence or even early adulthood and everyone is susceptible. When it comes to classifying this incurable disease, there is much debate on whether or not it a type of anxiety (Abramowitz, Taylor, & McKay, 2009). It is important to be able to understand this mental disorder since so many people are diagnosed with it. While there are treatments for OCD, there are no cures yet. Treatments could range anywhere from taking prescribed medication to just going to therapy and counseling fo...
The purpose of this paper is to analyze, diagnose, and to determine a proper treatment plan to work toward the beneficial prognosis for the individual indicated within the case study.
OCD has symptoms such as compulsive hoarding, extreme anxiety, depression, and food aversions. It currently has no sure cause but it has said to be a product of genetics or abnormalities in the brain and serotonin levels as controlling serotonin tends to help in treatment of OCD. Obsessive Compulsive disorder is seen in 2.3% of Americans. It’s more prominent in adults than in children.