Obsessive Compulsive Disorders Case Study

Lady Macbeth described symptoms that are associated with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). People with OCD are diagnosed when the obsessions and/or compulsions disrupt their everyday lives for more than an hour per day or cause substantial distress or impairment (Beidel, Frueh, & Hersen, 2014). If we broke down the diagnosis, obsessions are defined as recurring thoughts, urges, or images that you try to suppress, and compulsions are repetitive actions that people may engage in to avoid or diminish anxiety (Beidel, Frueh, & Hersen, 2014). Lady Macbeth reported that she was afraid of germs and began a ritual of hand washing and shaking her clothing out that would consume about six hours of her day. She also began to believe that something bad would happen to her if she did not do things a certain amount of times to prevent these dreadful things.
2. If you completed an assessment with this client, what Biological, family and cultural considerations of their background would you need to see to justify the diagnosis? …show more content…
Lady Macbeth stated that she had grown up in an environment where the mother valued cleanliness. A normal learned behavior would be for her to keep her room clean and maintain proper hygiene. At some point, this learned behavior of cleanliness has manifested itself into an anxiety that is beginning to take over her life. She may also be using the OCD as a coping mechanism. Since her grandmother is ill, she may feel that the germs will cause her grandmother to become even more sick. Her OCD behavior may be an unhealthy coping mechanism of her fearing her grandmother’s