Obsessive compulsive disorder is a disease that many people know of, but few people know about. Many people associate repeated washing of hands, or flicking of switches, and even cleanliness with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), however there are many more symptoms, and there are also explanations for those symptoms. In this paper, I will describe what obsessive compulsive disorder is, explain some of the effects of it, and explain why it happens. I will also attempt to prove that while medication doesn’t cure OCD, it vastly improves one’s quality of life. Furthermore I intend to show that behavior therapy (cognitive based therapy) is another useful tool in helping a person to overcome their OCD.
According to the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder foundation (www.ocfoundation.org), “OCD is a medical brain disorder that causes problems in information processing.” They compare OCD to a brain hiccup; the brain gets stuck on a certain thought and cannot move forward. The brain is incapable of dealing with thoughts of worry or doubt. This causes many side effects that can clearly distinguish a person as OCD. The text book for Dr. Steinberg’s Brain and Behavior class (that I took last year)spells it out a little clearer. “Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) consists of two behaviors that occur in the same person, obsessions and compulsions.” (Garrett, 387)
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a form of an anxiety disorder. The WHO classifies OCD as one of the top ten most “disabling illnesses.” (The Practitioner, 1) The most well known side effects of OCD is the repeated washing of one’s hands. However, there is more to this compulsive hand washing then meets the eye. While it could technically be classified as a need to feel cleansed, it is actually more of a fear of germs or other impurities. The cleansing will proceed until the person is satisfied, which in some cases is never. This is the reason a person with OCD will wash their hands repeatedly. People with OCD also are known to have a fear of unlucky numbers or words, illness or injury (which relates back to the hand washing), uncertainty, thinking bad or harmful thoughts against someone, object symmetry, and many other issues, which to a non OCD person, seem almost miniscule.
How is it possible for people to get OCD? I...
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(7) Nangle, Douglas W., O’Grady, April C., Sallinen, Bethany J., Successful Medication Withdrawal Using Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for a Preadolescent with OCD. Journal of Academic Child Adolescence Psychiatry, 43:11, 1441-1444. November 2004.
(8) Multiple Authors, Fluoxetine in Children and Adolescents with OCD: A Placebo Controlled Trial. Journal of Academic Child Adolescence Psychiatry, 41:12, 1431-1438. December 2002.
(9) Lippincott/Williams & Wilkins, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry., Retrieved April 2005.
(10) Barrett, Paula, Healy-Farrell, Lara, March, John. Cognitive-Behavioral Family treatment of Childhood Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A controlled Trial. Journal of Academic Child Adolescence Psychiatry, 43:1, 46-62. January 2004
(11) The Practitioner, 181-183, March 2002.
Obsessive-Compulsive disorder (OCD) - is characterized by persistent, uncontrollable and unwanted feelings or thoughts (obsessions) and routines or rituals (compulsions) in which individuals engage to try to prevent or rid themselves of these thoughts. In example of common compulsions include washing hands or cleaning repeatedly for fear of germs.
Darien is a patient who possibly displays comorbidity. His symptoms lead me to believe that he could possibly be diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. Darien’s symptoms that point to OCD are that he has rituals he must complete and if he does not he becomes anxious and is unable to continue with his day. He is however aware that these rituals are not actually helping him but he cannot stop doing them. He also reports feeling anxious most of the day, especially if he cannot perform his rituals, and that he is becoming increasingly more anxious. He is also unable to keep himself from worrying and feeling anxious.
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 (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...
middle of paper ... ... It is very important to try to treat OCD and not just ignore it. According to the article, there are certain interactive online activities for children to help treat OCD. These games are played with parents and therapists for the child to have a better understanding of the treatment methods.
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.
The biological perspective examines how brain processes and other bodily functions regulate behaviour. It emphasizes that the brain and nervous system are central to understanding behaviour, thought, and emotion. It is believed that thoughts and emotions have a physical basis in the brain. Electrical impulses zoom throughout the brain’s cells, releasing chemical substances that enable us to think, feel, and behave. René Descartes (1596–1650) wrote an influential book (De Homine [On Man]) in which he tried to explain how the behaviour of animals, and to some extent the behaviour of humans, could be like t...
This essay will introduce some similarities and differences between both symptoms and experiences of six different authors who have been personally affected by obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Since OCD is not very well understood by many members of the public ("Escape"), I hope that the experiences of the authors that I researched will be able to paint a vivid picture of what life with OCD is like.
...hope that diagnosis is found when the individual is still young and the symptoms will not worsen over time. Response of treatments varies in each individual and some studies suggest that medication and behavioral therapy are the most effective in relieving the symptoms of OCD (What is OCD?, 2014). While there is still a small percentage of individuals with OCD that neither medication nor behavioral treatment produces no significant change at all their symptoms. The combination of both methods has been found in several cases to be superior to either treatment on its own. Most individuals who have received effective treatments find that the symptoms are reduced drastically by 40% to 50%. That makes it enough to change their lives where upon they are to go back to school, work and their families. In other words they can become a functioning part of society again.
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.
This case paper is about Lucinda, a 20-year old single female, who suffers from the Cleaning/Contamination Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) condition since she was very young. She is characterized by intrusive thoughts, images, and/or impulses that cause distress (obsessions) and repetitive behaviors that are performed to neutralize these intrusions (Coles, Schofield & Pietrefesa, 2006), i.e. her repetitive cleaning and washing behaviors. Her anxiety became so excessive that it interfered with her daily life. She perceived that some undesirable object(s), in this case the germs, were still on the things that she will come in contact with, even after she had repeatedly washing and/or cleaning them. Her anxiety further degraded both her social and occupational functioning, which resulted in considerable impacts to herself, her friends and family. In additions, her anxiety also caused her not be able to function to her fullest potential academically and to socialize with her friends and family as much as she wanted to.
... or fearful without having obsessive thoughts or acting compulsively. One type of therapy called exposure and response prevention is especially helpful in reducing compulsive behaviors in OCD.
There are several things that are included in OCD, including its symptoms, treatments and its involvement with the brain. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder recognize their symptoms to be ego-dystonic which are thoughts one would not usually have and not within one’s control but is still a product of one’s mind. The two common symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder are obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions take the form of persistent and uncontrollable thoughts, images, impulses, worries, fears or doubts. An anonymous writer wrote about his/her images, “These images included hitting, stabbing, poisoning and shooting people, even the people I loved the most…” However, compulsions are either repetitive physical behaviors or mental thought rituals that are performed over and over again to help relieve a person’s anxiety. Over time compulsions can become more elaborate and time- consuming. Shirley Brinkerhoff mentions in her book Amanda, a high school girl facing OCD, said, “Then I started having to count my steps. Like, 387 steps to the bus stop, and if missed...
Toates, F. (2010) ‘Brains, bodies, behaviour and minds’ in SDK228 The science of the mind: investigating mental health, Book 1, Core concepts in mental health, Milton Keynes, The Open University, pp. 29-90.
There are many symptoms that lead to the conclusion that someone is suffering from OCD. A person may have a fear of germs, wanting things to be in perfect order constantly, and unwanted thoughts. The compulsions in OCD are the acts that a person feels obliged to do and this may include repeatedly washing hands, excessively cleaning and washing hands and counting regularly. Life with OCD is generally hard and the sufferer generally does not get any relief or satisfaction until they are able to perform their rituals (National Institute of Mental health,