Background and Rationale Obsessive compulsive disorder is a psychiatric disorder, formulated of unwanted and repeated thoughts leading to extreme and obsessive behavior to avoid those thoughts. People who have OCD will never be satisfied regarding their cleanliness, always thinking they are not clean enough. Antidepressants are used as a common medication for this disorder. Although patients usually wait for years before they seek medical help, they deny at first that they have problem. It may be the most debilitating anxiety disorder. Patients could have it in early adulthood or late adolescence; they can develop it at any age – even in childhood. Frequent cleaning and washing are the most common and recognized symptoms in the obsessive-compulsive cleanliness disorder. People who have OCD are trying, by way of extreme cleaning acts or avoiding touch things directly, to avoid harm, illness and contamination: for example, they avoid touching door knobs without a napkin, and engage in extreme hand washing. It is also common to see people with OCD have raw skin, avoiding shaking hands, ...
Obsessive-Compulsive disorder (OCD) - is characterized by persistent, uncontrollable and unwanted feelings or thoughts (obsessions) and routines or rituals (compulsions) in which individuals engage to try to prevent or rid themselves of these thoughts. In example of common compulsions include washing hands or cleaning repeatedly for fear of germs.
OCD is broken down into two components the obsession and the compulsion. The first component; obsession is when an individual is consistently having these reoccurring thoughts or images about a certain problem or issue in their life. For example; an individual that has OCD can have a constant thought or image about getting sick or dying from the various germs or diseases that people contract every day. So this individual goes to the extreme to make sure that they do not contract any of these germs or diseases. That is when the compulsive component begins. This is when the individual takes these extreme actions to protect themselves from whatever they have these high anxiety feelings about. So continuing using the same example; this individual will consistently clean their homes every day for several hours at a time. They tend to clean their hands several times when out in public and are very tedious about where they go and what they touch while in public. They are also very caution about how they interact with other people. They just take extra steps to protect themsel...
Others exhibit extreme cleanliness and will wash their hands or take showers as often as they can because they constantly feel dirty. OCD devastates people’s social lives as they are fixated and obsessed with perfection that can take forever to achieve. However people living with OCD are often found to have an above average intelligence and typically excel at school due to their detail oriented mindset, cautious planning and patience. OCD can be caused by many different factors such as genetics or the ever changing world a... ... middle of paper ... ...
Some symptoms of Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) are fear of germs, perfectionism, and rituals. When someone has OCD they are afraid of germs and might constantly be washing their hands or cleaning their room. Someone who suffers from OCD needs everything to be perfect and they might organize their closet by color size. Their rituals calm their anxiety. Certain rituals are things such as checking the stove a certain number of times to make sure it is off or tap their finger a number of times just because it makes them feel better. Obsessive compulsive disorder can be associated with other mental disorders that cause stress and anxiety, but it can be treated with cognitive behavioral therapy and medication.
There are a couple evident symptoms of OCD. People tend to do an action over and over again to calm their anxiety levels. They tend to not be able to control unwanted thoughts or actions, and spend minimum an hour each day on the obsessing rituals which gets in their way for daily life. Common obsessions are needs for symmetry or order, fear of germs, causing harm to other people, dirt or germs, etc. Common compulsions include constant bathing, hoarding of items, constant counting, etc. These signs can interfere with a person’s life and ruin relationships with others.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a type of anxiety disorder that can be best characterized by the recurrent or disturbing thoughts that are labeled as obsessions. Sometime these obsessions can take on the form of intrusive images or the unwanted impulses. The compulsions can come from the repetitive or ritualized behaviors that a person feels driven to perform on a daily basis. The majority of people with the diagnosis of OCD can have both obsessions and compulsions, but most of the times about 20% have obsessions alone while 10% may have the compulsions alone (Goodman M.D., 2013) . Common types that have been illustrated in individual’s diagnoses with OCD can be characterized with concerns of contamination, safety or harm to themselves, unwanted acts of aggression, the unacceptable sexual or religious thoughts, and the need for symmetry or exactness. While some of the most common compulsion can be characterized as excessive cleaning, checking, ordering, and arranging rituals or the counting and repeating routines activities that are done sometimes on a daily basis multiple times in a day.
One kind of anxiety disorder is obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). This disease can ruin a person's life because it causes them to have repetitive thoughts and behaviors towards certain things. Life can become very difficult because this way of thinking and acting is very difficult to overcome, especially since the obsessions have no point and are stressful for the person. It begins to interfere with the person's school, work, and/or home.
(198)First, we need to understand what fear and anxiety is. Fear is when the nervous system responds to a threat to ones well being. Anxiety is when there is a vague sense of danger. Both of these term help the body determine when action needs to be taken like “Fight” or “Flight”. When they both come clinically significant is when people can’t not live there normal lives without one or there other or both interfering. “Their discomfort is so server or to frequent, last too long, or is trigger to easily, (Comer, 2013, pp.114)”. Then they are termed with having an anxiety disorder or some other disorder. Most psychologist use the DSM-5 check list when diagnosing a patient with anxiety disorder. They look for these signs that the DSM-5 list:
The ages that the people have anxiety attacks vary but, anxiety problems commonly begin when people are in their twenty’s. This is something really great to know when you are only a year a way from being twenty.
This case paper is about Lucinda, a 20-year old single female, who suffers from the Cleaning/Contamination Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) condition since she was very young. She is characterized by intrusive thoughts, images, and/or impulses that cause distress (obsessions) and repetitive behaviors that are performed to neutralize these intrusions (Coles, Schofield & Pietrefesa, 2006), i.e. her repetitive cleaning and washing behaviors. Her anxiety became so excessive that it interfered with her daily life. She perceived that some undesirable object(s), in this case the germs, were still on the things that she will come in contact with, even after she had repeatedly washing and/or cleaning them. Her anxiety further degraded both her social and occupational functioning, which resulted in considerable impacts to herself, her friends and family. In additions, her anxiety also caused her not be able to function to her fullest potential academically and to socialize with her friends and family as much as she wanted to.
From making the food on the plate a certain way to a fear of shaking hands OCD will affect people in many ways. Everyone is different and some are even affected more than others but it is all in how they deal with these compulsions. Some can handle them, but others have to perform these rituals in order to feel whole. Otherwise
Those with the disorder usually know that their anxiety, thoughts, and fears are irrational and unfounded. They realize that it is angst and terror that they are experiencing. They know that people around them are not really critically judging them or evaluating them constantly. They understand that everyone is not out to degrade or embarrass them. But despite this logical knowledge and sense, they still continue to feel and believe differently, thus, thoughts and symptoms of anxiety usually persist with no indication of going away.
OCD has symptoms such as compulsive hoarding, extreme anxiety, depression, and food aversions. It currently has no sure cause but it has said to be a product of genetics or abnormalities in the brain and serotonin levels as controlling serotonin tends to help in treatment of OCD. Obsessive Compulsive disorder is seen in 2.3% of Americans. It’s more prominent in adults than in children.
There are many symptoms that lead to the conclusion that someone is suffering from OCD. A person may have a fear of germs, wanting things to be in perfect order constantly, and unwanted thoughts. The compulsions in OCD are the acts that a person feels obliged to do and this may include repeatedly washing hands, excessively cleaning and washing hands and counting regularly. Life with OCD is generally hard and the sufferer generally does not get any relief or satisfaction until they are able to perform their rituals (National Institute of Mental health,
Anxiety is a normal reaction to stress. Every person experiences some form of anxiety in his or her lifetime. Anxiety helps us deal with tense situations like using our flight or fight reaction, study harder for an exam, or keep focus on important deadlines. Anxiety can be useful until it gets to the point of interfering with everyday life. Some people explain it as not being able to shut the anxiety off. When anxiety becomes an excessive, irrational dread of everyday situations, it becomes a disabling disorder (National Institute of Mental Health, 2009). Each year, anxiety disorders affect about 40 million American adults age 18 years and older (National Institute of Mental Health, 2009). There are five major Anxiety Disorders they include Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Panic Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and Phobias.