This person keeps on washing his hands as he feels they are contaminated, it’s his compulsion.
FACTS
Cognitive Behaviour therapy and medications are the only two ways to treat OCD.
OCD is characterised by unreasonable and unwanted thoughts, feelings, ideas and sensations creating a fear that can be categorised as obsession resulting in repetitive behaviours and rituals which can be termed as compulsion.
With OCD a person may or may not realize that their obsessions aren’t reasonable, the element of fear drives compulsion to greater heights as a result they perform compulsive acts to ease their stressful feelings.
The symptoms of OCD can be seen in childhood, adolescence or adulthood.
Obsessions can be defined as:
- Constant and consistent urges or images that are experienced, at some time during the disturbance as intrusive and unwanted, which causes anxiety and distress.
- The respected individual makes an attempt to neutralize and suppress such thoughts with some other thought or action (performing of compulsion)
Compulsions can be defined as:
- Repetitive behaviours (example: hand washing, ordering, checking) or mental acts (example: repeating words silently, praying, counting) that the individual feels driven to perform in response to an obsession.
- The behaviours or acts are performed to prevent anxiety and stress caused by the obsessions.
SYMPTOMS
Obsession:
- Aggressive impulses
- Thinking someone will harm you
- Thinking you will harm someone
- Continuous sexual thoughts
- Repeated unwanted thoughts
- Extremely possessive about cleaning
Compulsion:
- Constantly washing hands
- Checking frequently doors are locked or not
- Arranging and rearranging particular items many times in a day
- Constantly checking upon things
- Constantly counting
CASE STUDIES
Mr R R, age 32 is a MBA graduate in finance, he recalls having been particular about cleanliness since his adolescence, but for last 3-4 years it has become problematic for him. Initially after using toilet he would wash his hands once or twice using soap so as to satisfactorily clean his hands. But now he has to repeatedly wash them for 15-20 times in order to stop Obsessive thoughts of hands being ‘dirty’. Also now he has to spend almost 2-3 hours in bathroom consuming almost all the water in the tank so as to control his thoughts of contamination. With time he has become more and more ritualistic in his routine in terms of repeatedly checking for his mobile phone, key or wallet as and when doubts regarding the same crop up and get stuck in his mind. This has severely disabled his life as due to these manners he has to waste 8-10 hours daily and hinders his functioning in personal and professional life.
