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... and she was checking all the time again. VII. Judy Judy is 13. Her life has been ruled by OCD as long as she could remember. She never even thought much about it until she was 8 and stayed over at her friends house for an overnight.
That was the first time Judy realized that she was different. She thought OCD was just part of being human. Well, when the other girls got ready for bed in 10 minutes and she was still getting ready for bed an hour later, she realized she was different. Judy was amazed that the other girls could fall asleep in that room with everything so "wrong." So, once Judy's friends were asleep, Judy spent the next hour tip-toeing around them and straightening books, papers, backpacks, and other stuff which was not lined up right. She then went to bed and cried. Now Judy has another fear.
She has learned a lot about OCD, and is sort of sad, as so much of who she thought she was seems to be either obsessions or compulsions. She had calculated that about 15 minutes a day were free of OCD. She is glad that the treatment is working, as her life had become totally controlled by constant obsessions and compulsions. But who is she? Now that she is not totally controlled by OCD, what kind of person is she?
Judy isn't sure yet. VIII. Jocelyn Jocelyn was sexually assaulted at age 8 by a neighborhood boy who was 14. It was terrible, but she told her mother after the second time and the boy was charged and sentenced to a youth prison.
Two years later, Jocelyn was doing poorly in school and seemed preoccupied with getting things done just right. She also became mildly depressed. She was seen in a local mental health center and entered into 8 months of counseling for sexual abuse. She was referred to a psychiatrist for something to help her horrible insomnia.
It came out that part of her insomnia was due to horribly complex mental rituals and compulsions. In the end, as Jocelyn would tell you, the sexual assault was nothing compared to the agony she experienced from lifelong OCD. IX. Jonathan Like half the kids in his grade 2 class, Jonathan got sick this winter. His sister got Street throat, so did his brother. Jonathan only missed a few days of school and never ended up taking any antibiotics, as he wasn't very sick at all.
Two days later he could not sleep for anything. He could not fall asleep. He would come into his parent's bed crying about "bad thoughts" that wouldn't stop. During the day he was exhausted.
He started washing his hands over and over trying to get something "bad" off of them. He went to his family doctor and an appointment was made with a psychiatrist in a few weeks. By the time the appointment came, these problems were almost gone. They canceled their appointment.
The examples above give a snapshot at one time of obsessions and compulsions. Almost no one has one obsession or compulsion. The course of OCD shows a huge amount of change over time. Sometimes it isn't so much the time OCD takes, but the mental Hell it puts a person through that is the most disabling. This is often the case with very embarrassing, sexual, or aggressive obsessions and also with very unusual compulsions. Sometimes certain OCD symptoms will make school, work or social life impossible.
At school, having to do things over and over or having obsessive fears about masturbating in public, for example, will make it very difficult to concentrate on school. Working with the public and having obsessions about catching illnesses makes most jobs impossible. Children and adolescents who check, touch, hoard or who are very slow become social outcasts. Some children will have one obsession or compulsion for a few months and then it will disappear. There may be no obsessions or compulsions for years, and then they might return for no apparent reason.
A common pattern is for a person to have a number of obsessions and compulsions which are quite severe, but which then lessen, at least for awhile. Sometimes OCD seems to either stay the same or worsen, without any real periods of improvement. People get used to their obsessions and compulsions, but then they seem to just get worse. This is the worst course and most often is accompanied by depression. When researchers follow children with OCD for years, many children still show signs of OCD 2 - 7 years later. About 43 % of children still have the diagnosis of OCD, which means disabling obsessions and / or compulsions.
About 11 % had no sign of OCD whatsoever. The remaining 46 % showed some signs of OCD, but not enough to make a diagnosis... No factor, including age, sex, type of OCD, or insight into the illness has been proven to be a good predictor. Society is affected in ways that arent easily seen, for instance, if a political advisor, or an office holder, was to be a sufferer of OCD, than his / her work could be affected due to his / her mental illness. Since approximately 2 % of the population in America is OCD, (5 million people) society is most definitely affected, maybe even bettered by it, in the way that the OCD obsessions take over the work habits of our counties leaders, making them work until it is just right. In other ways it can be self-defeating, because these same leaders will have compulsions to do things that may waste time, money, and respect.
But not all this has to go untreated. When treating OCD there are two forms of treatment, Cognitive Behavioral treatment and another form of treatment is medications. Cognitive Behavioral treatment is a treatment in which the person is exposed to there obsession and go without fulfilling their compulsions. This kind of like "facing your fear." In treating OCD with medications there are many medicines that are prescribed, here are five of the most common: Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Luvox, and Anafranil. These medicines do not always work, but 60 - 80 % of the time they do.
Also these medicines do not just work right away. They have to take time to balance in the body. This usually takes about 6 - 8 weeks. A person is usually on one of these medicines for 12 - 18 months, but can be more or less. Support groups are few, yet one that I found on the Internet, called Emotions Annoymymous seemed to help alot of people, since this disease isnt well known by the general public, it is misunderstood, and the words obsessive-compulsive are used out of place far too frequently. My Opinion I think that OCD Is a common disorder that is underestimated and there are not enough people that are educated about it.
The more people know about something, the less they are afraid of it. There are five million people that have it, I think more people should know about it, one in fifty people has it.
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Research essay sample on Ready For Bed Obsessions And Compulsions
