Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Essay
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a cyclical mental health condition which involves unending obsessions paired with unsatisfying compulsions performed to attempt to alleviate the emotional and physical suffering generated by the obsessions. There are approximately five main clusters of OCD; checkers, doubters and sinners, counters and arrangers, hoarders, and washers and cleaners. Accounting for about one quarter of OCD sufferers, the most abundant category is washers and cleaners and serves as the focus of this paper. OCD’s severity ranges from minor effects on a person’s life to completely debilitating. If your case is severe enough, it will affect your job, personal relationship, friendships, and normal functioning in a profoundly negative manner. However, with support from medication, therapy, and family, a person can cope with the urges and win the battle against his or her own mind. OCD causes anxiety and distress based on uncontrollable thoughts and images that feel both intrusive and unpleasant to the sufferer. The ideas are often unrealistic, but are fantastically persistent and extremely disturbing. (Robinson) These thoughts and images compel the person to perform ritualized activities in an attempt to relieve the obsessive notions that will not stop playing in their mind. Like a jackhammer on concrete, the thoughts progressively get louder and louder and are impossible to ignore. The obsessive rituals are developed to decrease the amount of anxiety experienced by the OCD sufferer, but fail to reduce the distress to any significant degree. (Robinson)
Washers and cleaners, the largest cluster type of OCD affected people, have “a constant fear of contamination and being infected with a disease and infecting others” complimented by avoiding or “removing all possible sources of germs and dirt. Washers may repeatedly wash their hands or take showers, while cleaners may clean their house many times a day as well as clean objects, clothes or surfaces
Washers and cleaners, the largest cluster type of OCD affected people, have “a constant fear of contamination and being infected with a disease and infecting others” complimented by avoiding or “removing all possible sources of germs and dirt. Washers may repeatedly wash their hands or take showers, while cleaners may clean their house many times a day as well as clean objects, clothes or surfaces
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