Essay On Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Improved Essays
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder characterized by uncontrollable, unwanted thoughts and repetitive, ritualized behaviors that you feel compelled to perform. If an individual has OCD, they recognize that the obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors are irrational, but they feel unable to keep from doing them and breaking free. Obsessions are involuntary thoughts, images, or impulses that occur repeatedly in your mind. People who suffer from OCD definitely don’t want the thoughts but they can’t stop them not matter how hard they try. Most people with OCD fall into one of these categories:
Washers are afraid of contamination, and have cleaning or hand-washing compulsions.
Checkers repeatedly check things that they associate with harm or danger.
Doubters and sinners are
…show more content…
These thoughts and behaviors cause tremendous distress, take up a lot of time, and interfere with your daily life and relationships, with OCD. It will have a person washing their hands until they scrub their hands raw. Most people with OCD have both the obsessions and compulsions but it is possible to have one and not the other.
If you suffer from OCD, you need to be connected very close to friends and family. You need all the support you can get. You also need to learn practice relaxation techniques. Your lifestyle has a lot to do with how well you will be able to live with OCD. The treatment for OCD is cognitive-behavioral therapy. Cognitive-behavioral therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder consists of exposure and response prevention, and cognitive therapy. Antidepressants are also available. OCD is very serious. Please avoid criticizing anyone suffering from OCD. They will need your support not the humor you find in what they are suffering

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    Doing so reduces anxiety for an individual with OCD, meeting a need to minimize the probability of a horrific occurrence (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Fineberg et al., 2014). Melvin presents with multiple symptoms of OCD, accordingly. For example, Melvin expresses an obsessive need for cleanliness, managed through behaviours that include wearing gloves in public, compulsive hand washing with scalding hot water and multiple bars of soap, and utilizing personal utensils in a public restaurant. Likewise, Melvin displays an obsessive urge for checking, fostered through a compulsive numbering pattern for locking doors, and turning off his lights.…

    • 1169 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Ocd Research Paper

    • 1985 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Josephine Beker Thomas Jefferson University Description of condition Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a heterogenous, chronic condition which can be further divided into subgroups dependent on the symptoms presented (Bjorgvinsson, Hart & Heffelfinger, 2007). It is characterized by obsessive thoughts or images, which cause stress or anxiety for the patients, as well as compulsive behaviors, which are often repetitive in nature and used to reduce the feelings of distress (McGuire, Lewin, Horng, Murphy & Storch, 2012). Signs/Symptoms - the manifestations…

    • 1985 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It causes people to do things they would never normally do if they did not have that disorder. It is a much larger problem then society makes it out to be and although it is not as common as other mental disorders like depression and anxiety, it is just as painful and just as serious. We as society should be more understanding towards people with OCD and scrupulosity. Which is another thing I have learned. I was not aware that there were different types of OCD.…

    • 1179 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Holden Caulfield Case Study

    • 551 Words
    • 3 Pages
    • 1 Works Cited

    One well-known example to describe OCD is the obsession of feeling dirty and always believing that one’s self is contaminated, and the compulsion would be to wash one’s hands constantly to get rid of the obsession. After a compulsion is performed, relief will be felt; though, relief will never last. The next section will cover how Holden fits these…

    • 551 Words
    • 3 Pages
    • 1 Works Cited
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A few years ago I was diagnosed with major depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The depression did it 's awful job by making me unmotivated to socialize with others, finish my schoolwork, and also pushing me towards suicide, but thankfully my family found out what was going on and helped me get better by taking me to a therapist, but the OCD on the other hand was a whole different beast. Previously I didn’t know that OCD could affect people in different ways, I had thought like a lot of people that it just caused people to repeat actions over and over again but my form makes me think unwanted or “intrusive” thoughts.…

    • 1291 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Obsessive compulsion disorder, also known as O.C.D, is a mental disorder where a person feels the need to repeat things over and over again until he or she feels satisfied. Psychologist call the need to repeat things over and over again a ritual. While only 2.3% of the U.S population has O.C.D (mHMR), not all O.C.D is the same. One person may feel the need to always wash their hands, while another may feel the need to turn a doorknob a certain amount of times. Doctors do not know what cause O.C.D, but they can most likely assume it is from genetics, stress, trauma, or a chemical imbalance in the brain.…

    • 839 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Silver Linings Playbook is a film about a developing love story between the two main characters Tiffany and Pat. They develop a relationship through their shared struggles of mental illness and help each other deal with their symptoms indirectly. The theme of mental illness and the way that it gets in the way of normative functioning is a reoccurring theme within the film. Pat’s father deals with his own struggles of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) which hinders his ability of normative function in certain scenarios. Diagnostic literature identifies OCD as the presence of a variety of different symptoms and issues that interrupt normative action and thoughts.…

    • 1176 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Disease trivialization has three main components: oversimplification of symptoms, skepticism of the severity, and levity (Pavelko, 2015). The first facet of disease trivialization, the oversimplification of symptoms, is easily applicable to OCD. For example, few people outside of the medical community are aware that OCD has many sub-types. However, due to media coverage focusing heavily on compulsive OCD over purely obsessive OCD many people only associate the disorder with organizing or hand-washing (Allen, 2013). Unfortunately, this disparity in knowledge excludes many of the subtypes in OCD and in turn excludes many of the symptoms that are specific to these subtypes.…

    • 2209 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    Ocd Research Paper

    • 2019 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Says one patient, “Some people don’t understand that OCD is something that completely takes over your life” (Ulsh, 2007). It can be completely debilitating, and yet the response one person got when she admitted to having it was from someone who asked her if she washed her hands constantly (Ulsh, 2007). Clearly, the reaction of the non-sufferer seems to veer from finding it funny to not understanding the condition at…

    • 2019 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    Life altering factors, common for individuals with an OCD diagnosis, can include social avoidance, lack of decision-making skills, and time-consuming rituals, such as checking (Lochner et al., 2014). This reality may present a continuous challenge for Melvin in his daily living, and relationships. Even with medication, and therapeutic treatment, which can have positive impact to assist in Melvin in managing his OCD, relapse to consuming, compulsive behaviour, is a high probability (Grant et al.,…

    • 950 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ocd Informative Speech

    • 469 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Some symptoms include fear of contamination, need for symmetry and order, feeling you can keep others safe by performing certain rituals, doubts that you locked the door or turned off the stove, and worrying about throwing out things with little or no value. These feelings can lead to certain behaviors such as excessive hand washing, constant rearranging this to get it right, checking the same things over and over again, and hoarding. OCD can also lead to other anxiety disorders and even major depression. If you have a close relationship with someone who has OCD, be patient. Those with OCD also tend to have trouble with maintaining healthy relationships and careers.…

    • 469 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Road Within Mental Illness

    • 1727 Words
    • 7 Pages

    In order to be diagnosed with OCD, these obsessions or compulsions must be time-consuming; for example, a compulsion can last up to one hour a day, or cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social,…

    • 1727 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Melvin Udall is a middle aged man, in his forties or fifties who is part of a higher socioeconomic class, due to his successful career as a stay at home writer. He lives in an upscale New York apartment and during his free time enjoys playing the piano. Melvin expresses prejudicial attitudes, including anti-Semitism, racism, and heterosexism. He made several of these comments, claiming “assault and battery and your black,” to his neighbor’s black friend, “there’s Jews at my table,” along with another stereotypical comment about their “big noses,” and he even introduced his neighbor as “Simon the fag,” a homophobic slur. He gives little background information, except for saying that his dad used to hit him as a kid if he ever made a mistake while playing the piano, which may explain his behavior.…

    • 1336 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    There are also some negative attributes that come along with having OCD. It is all about learning how to cope with the negative side of OCD and turning it into something positive. Some negative effects would have to be getting anxiety from constantly checking on things, needing to repeatedly wash hands, and then begin to suffer from other psychological disorders (Goodman, 2016). OCD can lead to other disorders like “social isolation, low social functioning and comorbid illnesses such as anxiety/panic disorders and depression” (Thomsen, 1998, p. 11). There are many disorders that OCD can lead to if left untreated.…

    • 1185 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Psychologically, he has intrusive thought that without his rituals, his family would be in danger, (Toates, 2010, p1). Stress at work and family misunderstanding are his triggers. (Toates, 2010, p2). Improvement of social factors is a basis for a successful treatment, (The Open University, 2016). Biologically, Researches found increased activity in regions of the brain of OCD people.…

    • 800 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays