Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is a anxiety disorder that about one million people in the United States suffer from. Those suffering from the disorder have repetitive thought, images, or ideas that they can not get out of their head. These repetitive thoughts lead to anxiety which causes the suffer to resort to a competitive behavior.Then in order to try to deal with these thoughts sufferers often have rituals they preform to try to satisfy their thoughts.

One of the more common repetitive thoughts that those with obsessive compulsive disorder have is that they contaminated by dirty objects. This leads to them often washing their hands constantly often taking off layers of skin. Similar to the Glen in the movie who would go through more than a bar of soap a day.

Obsessive compulsive disorder was once thought to be rare but now is thought to effect around two percent of the population. Many cases go unreported making to hard to get an exact number of those who suffer. It effects people of all ethnic backgrounds and social classes the same. It is thought to be a neurological based problem because patients respond well to medication.

There are two major treatments for suffers of obsessive compulsive disorder. One treatment is medication, either clomipramine, which is usually used to fight depression, and fluvoxamine and fluoxetine which have also been found to work. The second type of treatment is behavior therapy. Here patients are exposed to what they fear and are encourage not to carry out their usual compulsive response.

Unlike many mental disorders, suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder often know they have a problem. However, this knowledge is not enough to get them to stop what they know is a senseless activity. Therefore, many try to hide their problem from others with a rather high success rate. The only problem with this is that they often don¹t get treatment until they have been dealing with it for a long time.