Obsessive compulsive disorder.

Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental health condition where a person has obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours.

OCD can affect men, women and children. People can start having symptoms from as early as 6 years old, but it often begins around puberty and early adulthood.

OCD can be distressing and significantly interfere with your life, but treatment can help you keep it under control.

Symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)

If you have OCD, you’ll usually experience frequent obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours.

An obsession is an unwanted and unpleasant thought, image or urge that repeatedly enters your mind, causing feelings of anxiety, disgust or unease.
A compulsion is a repetitive behaviour or mental act that you feel you need to do to temporarily relieve the unpleasant feelings brought on by the obsessive thought.
For example, someone with an obsessive fear of being burgled may feel they need to check all the windows and doors are locked several times before they can leave their house.

Women can sometimes have OCD during pregnancy or after their baby is born. Obsessions may include worrying about harming the baby or not sterilising feeding bottles properly. Compulsions could be things such as repeatedly checking the baby is breathing, and intrusive, unwanted and unpleasant thoughts, images or urges. These can cause anxiety and lead to repetitive behaviours.

If you keep getting these thoughts and they have an effect on your daily life, speak to your GP or health services.They can support you or refer you to a mental health professionals like counsellors , psychologists or psychotherapists if you need it.

Causes of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)

It’s not clear what causes OCD. A number of different factors may play a part, including:

family history – you’re more likely to develop OCD if a family member has it. It may be learned behaviour, or possibly because of your genes
differences in the brain – some people with OCD have areas of unusually high activity in their brain or low levels of a chemical called serotonin
life events – OCD may be more common in people who have been bullied, abused or neglected, and it sometimes starts after an important life event, such as childbirth or a bereavement
personality – neat, meticulous, methodical people with high personal standards may be more likely to develop OCD, also people who are generally quite anxious or have a very strong sense of responsibility for themselves and others.

Treatments for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)

There are some effective treatments for OCD that can help reduce the impact it has on your life.

The main treatments are:

Counselling or talking therapy – usually cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), which helps you face your fears and obsessive thoughts without “putting them right” through compulsions.
Also Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)
Exposure therapy was created to treat OCD, PTSD and various phobias. Exposure and response prevention therapy is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy that was developed to treat people with OCD. Studies show that ERP is the most effective form of treatment for OCD. In fact, some studies credit it with single-handedly changing the outlook for individuals with OCD from “poor” to “very good.”

This form of therapy helps people with OCD understand how to identify and cope with their triggers and compulsions, and — in ERP therapy — patients are exposed to different situations in order to provoke their obsessions in a controlled and safe environment, creating the opportunity to practice the prevention of compulsion responses. The goal of ERP is ultimately to free individuals from compulsions by accepting uncertainty so they can live more comfortably.
People with OCD who receive ERP often need somewhere between 12 to 25 sessions of ERP to begin seeing improvement in their symptoms. The length of time it takes for someone to see improvement can vary from person to person and depends on the severity of your symptoms, as well as on the subtype of OCD that you might be experiencing.

ii) medicine – usually a type of antidepressant medicine called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which can help by altering the balance of chemicals in your brain
CBT will usually have an effect quite quickly. It can take up to 12 weeks before you notice the effects of treatment with SSRIs, but most people will eventually benefit.

If these treatments do not help, you may be offered:

an alternative SSRI
a combination of an SSRI and CBT
an antidepressant called clomipramine.
**Please note as a counsellor we can’t recommend or endorse medication we only treat through our holistic approach and therapeutic ways. We have seen patients with mild OCD symptoms and successfully helped them to move on in life without any fear or discomfort.
If Talkspace369 assessment outcome shows severity in OCD symptoms we can recommend patient to see a psychiatrist or other mental health professional.