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...
... middle of paper ...
...BBC Interactive (BBCi) Science and Nature:Human Body and Mind, retrieved April 5th, 2004 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/articles/disorders/gallery/gallery_case4.shtml?disorder=4&submit.x=5&submit.y=10
(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 is a psychiatric disorder, formulated of unwanted and repeated thoughts leading to extreme and obsessive behavior to avoid those thoughts. People who have OCD will never be satisfied regarding their cleanliness, always thinking they are not clean enough. Antidepressants are used as a common medication for this disorder.
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.
In the book "The boy who couldn't stop washing" by Judith L. Rapoport, M.D., the narrator, Rapoport, deals with hundreds of mentally disturbed children and adults who suffer of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Rapoport describes the intricacies of the disease and its treatments as well as the fact that the cause is unknown but there are many probable theories. Victims of this horrible disease are plagued with overwhelming thoughts of insecurity that tear apart their lives and haunt them, increasingly, over their lifetimes. Rapoport while learning about OCD, herself, learned how to treat each one with many different psychological perspectives including: biological, behavioral, and psychodynamic contributions. A story on ABC's 20/20 about OCD brought Rapoport's new study on the disease to the light, resulting in thousands of calls to her office daily from desperate OCD sufferers.
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...
Obsessive compulsive disorder is a psychological disorder with symptoms of obsessive thoughts and compulsive actions, such as cleaning, checking, and counting. OCD is linked to other disorders such as attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) and experiential avoidance disorder (EA). OCD and ADHD have similar effects in children being that they both lead to procrastination when trying to complete simple tasks. People with OCD and EA both have consistent negative thoughts but the same treatments can be used for both. The neurobiological link between OCD and ADHD says “Obsessive compulsive disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are two of the most common neuropsychiatric diseases in pediatric populations. Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies suggest that partly similar executive functions are affected in both disorders” (Brem et al. 175). OCD and ADHD are very common especially in children and they both have similar effects. People with obsessive compulsive disorder put themselves through a lot more ...
The symptoms of OCD can affect a person negatively because of its interference in life. Some common interference is depression, alcohol or drug abuse, suicidal...
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) can be defined as having repetitive, unwanted, urges and thoughts that raise the need for excessive amounts of time or energy spent on the unwanted urges. OCD typically involved ritualistic like tendencies that result in two types of characteristics, obsessions and compulsions. Obsession can be characterized by the actions and thoughts that intrude one’s mind. As well as the uncontrollable and irrational impulses one must face with OCD. Compulsions can be defined as the act of doing excessive things related to behaviors. People feel the need to act on these compulsions for the sole purposes of releasing the anxiety they feel by the compulsive and reoccurring thoughts. In essence,...
For a person to be diagnosed with OCD, they need to have both an obsession and a compulsion. An obsession is best defined as recurrent and persistent thoughts, urges or images that are experienced during the disturbance as intrusive and unwanted. While compulsions are defined by: repetitive behaviours such as hand washing, ordering, checking in which the person feels they feel strongly compelled to perform in response to their obsession The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM–5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). The most empirically sound method of treatment is called Exposure response prevention (Himle & Franklin, 2009). This will be the psychological method of treatment discussed.
This essay will focus on paediatric OCD with CBT being the preferred treatment method. It will briefly look at the signs and symptoms of OCD then continue into more detail discussing CBT’s effectiveness, through what is involved, strategies learnt to overcome OCD and pharmacotherapy. A review of evidence will be presented of studies showing the effectiveness for peadatric OCD.
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.
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...
Always washing your hands? Or perhaps you are always counting things or checking things. Are these actions taking over your life or constantly occupying your mind? Perhaps you have obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). It was once thought that OCD was rare; however, recently it has been found that 2-3% (or 7 million Americans) of people have OCD. People with OCD are usually diagnosed by between the ages of 20 and 30, and about 75% of those who will develop OCD will show symptoms by age 30. (1) This leads to a couple questions that need to be answered: What is OCD? What causes it, and what is the most effective treatment? These questions will be answered throughout the paper.
One of the most widely spread disorders across the country these days is obsessive compulsive disorder, or otherwise known as OCD. All types and ages of people can develop OCD, and it can play a large role in how you go about your daily life, and the daily stresses that you run into. Obsessive compulsive disorder falls in with the category of anxiety disorders, and is characterized by persistent routines and obsessions which often results in compulsive rituals done on a daily basis. Some common factors of having OCD is the need to arrange things, compulsive acts of hand washing, and even counting. (Canadian Mental Health Association, 2014, p. 1) There are many symptoms that can fall into the category of being classified as OCD. Some people have both obsessions and compulsions, but also some may only experience one factor. (L.Robinson, 2014, p.2) Some symptoms that can be classified as signs of obsessive thoughts include: fear of germs, violent thoughts or images, fear of harm, superstitions, and symmetry. Although these are only just a few, there are plenty of symptoms most involving the action of being afraid of something. Some signs of compulsive behavior can result in excessive double checking of things, counting, repetition of words, organization of things, and even hoarding. I find it ironic that two people of a completely different mindset of what a home should look like, could both have the same disease. For instance, one person can be a hoarder living in a cluttered house, and one person could be living in the most pristinely cleaned home. Although OCD may seem harmless and in some cases even an advantage to one’s lifestyle of not becoming helpless and lazy, there are many risk factors that come with it as well. Obsessive ...
OCD is a very common disorder affecting almost everyone in the world, some being affected much more than others. First of all I will give a brief definition of OCD. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder causes the brain to get stuck on one particular urge or thought that can’t easily be let go. People with OCD often call it a case of, “mental hiccups that won’t go away.” Everyone has this condition in one way or another. For instance, a man might go into a bathroom and flush the toilet with his foot so he won’t have to touch the handle that others have handled after handling themselves. Someone with a worse case in the same situation might go in the bathroom, use toilet paper to lower or raise the lid, flush with foot before use, flush with foot after use, use paper towel to turn water on, wash his hands for a few minutes to get off all possible germs, and use more paper towels to open door following up with hand sanitizer. OCD usually involves having obsessions and compulsions although having one or the other is not uncommon. First is the obsession, which is thoughts, images, and impulses that occur over and over again that make the person feel out of control.
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...