Obsessive Compulsive Disorders

There are many different obsessions and compulsions that create the disorder of being “obsessive compulsive.” For every obsession there is a compulsion. Some of these obsessions and compulsions include the fear of contaminating and of germs, which leads to excessive washing and cleansing of yourself and things around you; the fear of harm or danger, which leads to checking under beds, closets, corners, and making sure doors are always locked; fear of loss which leads to hoarding, or stashing everything you have ever owned so that no one can take it away from you; fear of violating religious rules which leads to excessive praying and attending religious services; and a need for symmetry which leads to arranging things over and over again whether at work or home.

Obsessive compulsiveness can be caused by a neurobiological disorder in which there is an imbalance of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin is the chemical which carries messages to the brain. The lower the levels, the more obsessive compulsiveness is realized.#(OCFMC)

The amygdale and hippocampus also play a role in obsessive compulsiveness. The amygdale is the communication hub between the parts of the brain. It processes and interprets incoming sensory signals and also alerts the brain of threats. When this alert is processed through the brain, fear and anxiety are triggered, for example the fears of spiders and heights. The hippocampus encodes these events that threaten and cause anxiety and then store the events into memory. When these events are stored, then something triggers that storage, the fears begin again. Child abuse victims and military combatants have a smaller hippocampus than the “normal” person. The smaller the hippocampus, the smaller the storage space, so that person is going to be triggered with memories of fear more often causing them to become anxious, and leading to obsessive compulsiveness.#(National Institute of Mental Health, 2006)

25 percent of people who suffer from obsessive compulsiveness have an immediate family member who suffers from it as well. There are a few ways to treat this disorder however there is no known cure. Drugs such as SSRIs and Clomipramine can help about 60% of the sufferers however these drugs can cause a young person to become depressed and suicidal. It is not worth the risk, according to professionals. These medicines increase the serotonin. However, if a person stops taking these medicines, there is a very great chance that they will fall into a relapse of their original obsessive compulsive behavior.#(Tynan, PhD, 2006)

Another form of treatment is ERP (exposure and ritual prevention). During this treatment, the person is gradually exposed to their fears and shown how harmless these fears really are. For instance, a person afraid of spiders may be exposed to one spider living in an enclosed area, and in time more spiders. They may even be exposed to spider crawling on their arm toward the end of the treatment just to show that there is nothing to be afraid of. 85% of people who suffer from the obsessive-compulsive disorder respond very well to ERP without the use of drugs.

The most radical and least used process to treat sufferers is psychosurgery. The only time this treatment is used is when medicines and ERP refuse to work and the sufferer cannot live with the disorder. During neurosurgery, 30 percent of patients tested showed substantial benefits.

Obsessive-compulsiveness does not only affect the person who suffers from it, but also those who live with the sufferer or have a lot of contact with the sufferer. Many times, people with OCD refuse to get help and believe that nothing is wrong with them. They are afraid to realize that something is indeed wrong and that they are different from everyone else. There are also sufferers who need help and know that they need help but no one will believe them or listen to them. Some people refer to them as hypochondriacs and others think them to be excessive complainers.

There is not a lot of help for children with obsessive compulsive disorder because it is so hard to label a child with any type of behavioral disorder because a child is constantly changing to adapt to their surroundings. Sometimes when we realize that a child needs help, they have progressed so much that it takes a lot of hard work and therapy when it could have been easily taken care of from the get-go.

We really need to be careful when trying to treat OCD because sometimes a person regresses during therapy or is being treated for something they really do not have. Also at times we believe it to be a mild case when in actuality a person is afraid to tell his or her therapist or doctor what they really feel because they are afraid to be considered “crazy.”

Doctors, educators, and family members of people with OCD need to let other people know exactly what OCD is. There is no reason to treat a person any differently, especially when it comes to children. Children are not glass and can bounce back quickly, providing that we treat all children as equals. Just because some children need a little extra help than others, it does not mean that the child is worse or sicker or “different” than other children.

I found this project to be very interesting and have printed out some information to give to a friend of mine who thinks that she has OCD but her family and friends think she is just over-reacting. I hope that I was able to help her in the process of my research.

Sources:
http://www.emedicine.com/ped/topic2794.htm (eMedicine.com~Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/anxiety.cfm#anx9 (National Institute of Mental Health~Anxiety Disorders)