Living With OCD

"It's my OCD." I hear that on and off from friends and patients who half-jokingly use the term to describe overly careful behavior - such as double-checking to make sure the gas is off in the stove - but don't actually have obsessive-compulsive disorder. True OCD can be a devastating disease. Patients have intrusive, uncontrollable thoughts and severe anxiety centered around the need to perform repetitive rituals. They can be physical such as hand washing or mental such as counting. The behavior significantly interferes with normal daily activities and persists despite most patients being painfully aware that the obsessions or compulsions are not reasonable.

OCD affects 2-3 percent of the world's population. We've seen characters with the disorder portrayed in television (e.g., Tony Shalhoub's Adrian Monk) and in film (e.g., Jack Nicholson's Melvin Udall in "As Good As It Gets." Yet it's still associated with stigma, shame, and an alarming level of ignorance by many health professionals. On average, people look for help for more than nine years and visit three to four doctors before receiving the proper diagnosis. In an excellent review article on the subject, Dr. Michael A. Jenike, offers three helpful screening questions: "Do you have repetitive thoughts that make you anxious and that you cannot get rid of regardless of how hard you try?" "Do you keep things extremely clean or wash your hands frequently?" And "Do you check things to excess?" He suggests that answering "yes" to any of these questions should prompt an evaluation for possible OCD.. Of course, these are just screening questions and keeping a spotless kitchen doesn't mean you have a disorder.

For this week's CBSDoc.com, I interviewed Jeff Bell, KCBS radio broadcaster and author of "Rewind, Replay, Repeat: A Memoir of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder" and "When In Doubt, Make Belief: Life Lessons from OCD." He poignantly told me about the mental anguish associated with his illness, how it threatened to sabotage his career and personal life. His OCD focused on a fear of unintentionally harming others. He found himself unable to drive a car because every time he hit a bump he was afraid he had run somebody over; each time, he needed to get out and check. Even walking to work presented a challenge. He explained that a twig on the sidewalk could stop him in his tracks and fill him with what he knew were irrational thoughts but was powerless to control. Maybe somebody would be harmed by the twig if he didn't move it. But if he did move it then maybe somebody would be harmed who wouldn't have if he had just left it alone.

Jeff Bell sought treatment and turned his life around. His message is that others can do the same. Highly successful approaches including cognitive-behavioral therapies and medication can help the majority of patients. But only those who ask for help.

---

Resources for OCD include:
The Obsessive Compulsive Foundation
The Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies

Uptodate

[howyougetfamous1]

I think that OCD without checking compulsions is really underrated. It is much harder to diagnose someone without textbook OCD. OCD can be merely intrusive thoughts that will not go away that cause anxiety in the person. These can be anything! People can obsess about killing loved ones even though they never would kill a loved one or do anything violent at all. These thoughts produce anxiety in the person, but they may not have accompanying compulsions such as washing hands or checking the locks on doors five times. A lot of times, these people will go out of their way to avoid things that evoke anxiety like watching violent shows on television or even knives.

[fabrat1]

My mother has recently come to live with me and she has OCD. Hers is mainly counting and tapping her fingers a certain number of times etc. She was having a hard time reading a book because she was counting the letters in words and words in a sentence and had even started counting the number of sentences in a paragraph. She was doing that with her books, TV shows and general conversations. She has finally started a new medication and has cut way back on her counting which is good because it was driving her crazy.

[mnbrant]

Thanks for your insight on OCD theres a bunch of you tube videos from a guy calling himself doctorofmind that helped me out. I don't think I have OCD as I like germs too much.