What is OCD? Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a fairly common psychiatric disorder1 that 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. 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 are affecting their daily life in a negative way. As they engage themselves in such useless activities for half a day, this may also lead them to a condition of tics, anxiety disorder, and risk of suicide at higher stages of OCD2.
Causes of OCD
The causes of OCD are not exactly known. There is some genetic component of an identical twin that is affected more than a non-identical twin.
1. Signs or Symptoms
The major signs are that they perform a certain task repeatedly to seek relief from obsession-related anxiety3.
2. Obsessions Are 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, and 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 of a few things that might cause illness, for example, excessive tooth brushing, cleaning kitchen and bathroom, washing clothes in a launderette, and washing hands frequently until they are satisfied that it’s clean.
- Obsession concerned with intrusion-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 it before twenty. Untreated OCD at early stages may last for decades.
3. Treatments Involve
3.1. Behavioral Therapy
It is a combination of psychotherapy and behavior analysis. This is done to focus on behaviors and also in combination with thoughts and feelings that are causing them.
Behavioral therapy4 including two disciples such Functional behavior assessments and Cognitive behavior therapy will mainly focus on OCD which includes increasing exposure to what causes the problem and not allowing them to do that activity repeatedly.
3.2. Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI)
It is done for people who are facing major depressive disorder and anxiety disorder, panic disorder, or OCD. SSRIs 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 a placebo. The treatment is done both in the short-term and long-term. Short-term treatment is 6-24 weeks and long term would be 28-52 weeks.
- Kendler, Kenneth S. “The nature of psychiatric disorders.” World Psychiatry 15.1 (2016): 5-12. ↩︎
- Del Casale, Antonio, et al. “Psychopharmacological treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).” Current neuropharmacology 17.8 (2019): 710-736. ↩︎
- Freud, Sigmund. The problem of anxiety. Read Books Ltd, 2013. ↩︎
- Wenzel, Amy. “Basic strategies of cognitive behavioral therapy.” Psychiatric Clinics 40.4 (2017): 597-609. ↩︎
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