What is OCD? 
Obsessive compulsive disorder is a fairly common psychiatric disorder which is chronic. It is a disorder where people do things frequently without their knowledge. It might be the need of checking things repeatedly, have certain thoughts repeatedly or even do certain routines repeatedly. The people who are suffering from OCD are unable to control these activities. Very common activities that OCD patients tend to do always are hand washing, checking to see the door lock and counting things and many more which is affecting their daily life in a negative way.As they engage themselves in such useless activities half a day, this may also lead them to a condition of tics, anxiety disorder and risk of suicide at higher stages of OCD.
Causes of OCD
The causes of OCD are not exactly known. There is some genetic component with an identical twin which is affected than a non-identical twin.
Signs or symptoms of OCD
The major signs of OCD are that they perform a certain task repeatedly to seek relief from obsession-related anxiety.
Obsession is of many types-
- Obsessive fear might be to prevent fire, damage, leaks or harm examples are verifying gas or electric stove, checking house lights, appliances, windows, door locks fearing that an explosion may lead to danger and also texting or calling loved ones, re-reading words or lines over and over again.
- Obsessive fear on few things that might cause illness, for example, excessive tooth brushing, cleaning kitchen and bathroom, washing clothes in a launderette, washing hands frequently until they are satisfied that its clean.
- Obsession concerned with intrusions related thoughts. People with OCD may face terrific intrusive thoughts such as someone or something other than oneself might be evil or God. These thoughts may harm that person or also that person who is taking care of the patient.
- Few people with OCD will also experience sexual obsession which is another unpleasant thing. This may involve intrusive thoughts or images of kissing, touching, fondling and intercourse.
OCD affects about 2-3% of people at some point of time in their life. It is usually found among the age group around thirty-five and few may face before twenty. Untreated OCD at early stages may last for decades.
Treatments of OCD involve
- Behavioral Therapy
It is a combination of psychotherapy and behavior analytic. This is done to focus on behaviors and also combination with thoughts and feelings that is causing them. Behavioral therapy including two disciples such as Functional behavior assessments and Cognitive behavior therapy will be mainly focusing on OCD which includes increasing exposure to what causes the problem and by not allowing them to do that activity repeatedly.
- Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors(SSRI)
It is done for people who are facing major depressive disorder and anxiety disorder, panic disorder, OCD. SSRI’s are prescribed as antidepressants in many countries. SSRIs are efficient in the treatment of OCD as the patients treated with SSRIs are responded twice as that when treated with placebo. The treatment is done both in short-term and long-term. Short-term treatment is of 6-24 weeks and long term would be 28-52 weeks.