Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a disabling condition characterized by persistent intrusive thoughts that cause distress. Compulsions or routines may be used by the patient to alleviate the worry and suffering connected with these ideas. These rituals can be personal and private, or they can involve others; the rituals are used to compensate for the ego-dystonic sentiments associated with obsessional ideas, and they can result in a severe loss of function.

Among the most prevalent obsessions are:

• Anxieties of contamination,
• Aggression/harm,
• Sexual worries
• Religious fears
• The drive to get things “exactly so”.

Some of the compensating compulsions for these obsessions are:

• Washing and cleaning
• Checking
• Reassurance-seeking
• Repeating
• Sorting and Arranging.

1. Obsessions, compulsions, or both are present:

The following two points are used to define obsessions:

• Recurrent thoughts, desires, or visions that are perceived as undesired at some point during the disturbance and generate significant distress in most people.
• The individual tries to repress such ideas, urges or visions with another thought or action (i.e., by replacing them with a compulsion).

The following two factors define compulsions:

• Repetitive actions or thoughts that a person feels compelled to perform as a result of an obsession.
• The behavioral or mental acts that are intended to reduce worry or suffering, or to prevent some dreaded situation; nevertheless, they do not correlate in a realistic way with the problem they are intended to prevent, or they are manifestly excessive.

2. Obsessions take up a lot of time or create clinically substantial distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other vital aspects of life.
3. The physiological consequences of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medicine) or another medical condition are not the factors causing obsessive-compulsive symptoms.
4. The symptoms of another mental disorder do not better explain the disturbance

• Excessive worries, as in a generalized anxiety disorder;
• preoccupation with appearance, as in a body dysmorphic disorder;
• difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, as in a hoarding disorder;
• hair pulling, as in trichotillomania a hair-pulling disorder;
• skin picking, as in excoriation [skin-picking] disorder;
• stereotypies, as in a stereotyping disorder;
• Eating disorders are characterized by ritualized eating habits.
• drug or gambling obsession, as observed in substance-related and addiction disorders;
• sickness anxiety disorder is characterized by an obsession with having an ailment;
• Impulses, as seen in disruptive, impulse-control, and conduct disorders;
• sexual drives or fantasies, as shown in paraphilic disorders;
• thought insertion or delusional preoccupations, as seen in schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic illnesses; or
• repetitive behavior patterns, as seen in autism spectrum disorders.

OCD is listed as one of the ten most debilitating conditions by financial loss and a deterioration in the quality of life by the WHO because it has the potential to impede one’s social growth and development.