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OCD stands for obsessive-compulsive disorder. An individual with OCD tends to worry about many different things. One out of fifty adults currently suffer from this disorder, and twice that many have had it at some point in their lives. When worries, doubts, or superstitious beliefs become excessive then a diagnosis of OCD is made. With OCD it is thought that the brain gets stuck on a particular thought or urge and just cant let go. Most often people with OCD describe the symptoms as a case of mental hiccups that wont go away.
This causes problems in information processing. OCD was generally thought as untreatable until the arrival of modern medications and cognitive behavior therapy. Most people continue to suffer even though they had years of ineffective psychotherapy. Today treatments tend to help most people with OCD.
OCD is not completely curable but is somewhat treatable. OCD is a potentially disabling condition that may persist throughout a persons life and get worse without treatment. An individual with OCD becomes trapped in a pattern of repetitive thoughts and behaviors that are senseless and distressing but are extremely powerful and hard to overcome. OCD can occur in cases from mild to severe, but if left untreated can destroy a persons life and capacity to function at work, school, and even at home.
Some of the worries and rituals can get out of control. An individual life becomes dominated by thoughts and behaviors they know make absolutely no sense but they are powerless to control. People with OCD tend to fear uncertainty; These people are plagued by persistent and recurring thoughts or obsessions that they find very disturbing. These thoughts usually reflect exaggerated anxiety or fears that have no basis on reality. A person who suffers from OCD has constant doubts about their behaviors and constantly seeks assurance from other people. Many people who suffer from this disorder feel compelled to perform certain rituals or routines to help relieve the anxiety caused by their obsessions, however the relief is only temporary.
Some rituals or obsessions include cleaning, checking, repeating, slowness, and hoarding. Usually an individual has both obsessions and compulsions, though sometimes they have only one or the other. A person with OCD usually wants everything around them to be perfect. {What is 1 }? Compulsions are intrusive thoughts, impulses, and images that feel out of control and occur over and over again.
A sufferer does not want to have these ideas and knows that they dont make any sense but find them intrusive and disturbing. A person with OCD may be obsessed with the idea they are contaminated or may contaminate someone else and worry excessively about dirt and germs. This person could also have an intense fear that they harmed someone else although they usually know it is not realistic. {What 3 } Uncomfortable feelings such as fear, disgust, doubt, or a sensation that things have to be just so usually accompany obsessions. A person tries to make their obsessions go away by performing certain compulsive rituals.
These compulsions are acts that an individual may perform repeatedly, often according to certain rules. OCD symptoms do not give a person pleasure but a sense of temporary relief for a short period of time. The relief is only temporary and the discomfort always comes back. These relieve make up a lot of time and interfere with a persons social life and relationships. Most people recognize at some point that their obsessions are not just worries about real problems but are coming from their minds. Compulsions are excessive or unreasonable but the sufferer has to perform them.
OCD poor insight is an individual that not recognize that their beliefs and actions are unreasonable and unreal. Extreme severe distress tends to happen when the symptoms wax and ware over time. OCD symptoms can start at any age from as early as preschool too as late as adulthood. 1 / 3 of 1 / 2 of adult sufferers said that their symptoms started during their childhood. On an average people spend 9 years seeking a diagnosis and see up to 3 to 4 doctors. Studies also show that it takes an average 17 years from the time OCD begins for an individual to find appropriate treatment. {What 3 } OCD may be under diagnosed and untreated for a number of reasons. People with OCD may be secretive about their symptoms or lack insight on the illness.
Many healthcare providers are not familiar with the symptoms and are not trained to provide treatment. Some people may also not have access to treatment resources. This is unfortunate since early diagnoses and proper treatment can help an individual. Research suggests genes do play a role in development of the disorder yet no specific genes have been found for OCD. Childhood onset tends to run in the family. An increasing risk for a child getting OCD is if the parent has it.
When OCD runs in families it seems to be inherited but not the specific symptoms. One example is if a child has checking rituals his mother might wash excessively. There is no single proven cause for OCD. Research suggests that OCD could involve problems in communication between the brain and deeper structures although this is not proven. {what 4 } For many years only a small minority of healthcare professionals patients had OCD there for it was thought to be rare. OCD went unrecognized often because many of those afflicted with it kept their repetitive thoughts a secret and failed to seek treatment. This led to the underestimate of the number of people with the illness. {obsessions 1 } Most common symptoms of OCD go along with a certain compulsion for instance: A need to tell, ask, or confess goes along with praying.
A need to have things just so goes along with hoarding or saving. Forbidden thoughts equals arranging. Excessive religious or moral doubt = counting. Intrusive sexual thoughts or urges = touching. Imagining losing control or aggressive urges = checking.
Imagining having harmed ones self or others = repeating. Fear of contamination or germs = washing. Obsessive symptoms occur in people of all ages. Not all of the compulsive behaviors represent an illness. Some rituals like bedtime songs and religious practices are a welcoming part of life. Normal worries like contamination fears may increase during times of high stress.
Only when persisting symptoms occur that make no sense, cause much distress or interfere with functioning do they need clinical attention. The less common form of OCD is hoarding which is the excessive saving of typically worthless items. A most commonly thought form of OCD is contamination. This is the awareness of germs, disease, or the presence of dirt that evokes a sense of threat and an incredible inspiration to reduce the presence of contamination.
The compulsion of contamination involves a cleaning response such as hand washing and chronic cleaning. {Steven 1 } Another common form of OCD is checking. Checking involves door locks, lights, switches, faucets, stoves, or items left unchecked that might pose a threat to ones well being or the well being of others. It is not uncommon for people to check items between 10 to 100 times a day. The impulse to recheck can remain until the person experiences a reduction in tension despite the realization that the item is secure.
One other less common form of OCD is ordering in which a person feels compelled to place items in a designated spot in order. In approximately 80 % of all cases, people performing the rituals are painfully aware that their behavior is unreasonable and irrational. OCD is an anxiety disorder the thought associated with OCD is bizarre. The thoughts associated with OCD are recurrent obsessions that create an awareness of alarm or threat. Obsessions can take form of a threat or physical alarm to oneself or others. People typically engage in some avoidance or escape response in reaction to the obsessive threat.
There are three main branches of OCD. The most common and well-known branch of OCD is known as OC where the undoing response generally involves some overt behavior. The next branch of OCD is purely obsess iowa this involves the escape or avoidance of noxious and unwanted thoughts. There are a number of treatment strategies which are specific to obsessive problems. For example motivations neutralizing behavior and other counter-productive strategies, increasing selective attention and increased negative mood. These serve to maintain the negative beliefs and therefore the obsessive-compulsive problem.
Most recently developments in cognitive therapy suggest that the key to understanding obsession problems lies in the way the intrusive thoughts, images, impulses and doubts are interpreted. The general and specific aspects of cognitive-behavioral treatment are described. The important negative interpretations usually include the idea that a persons actions can result in harm to onset to others. This responsibility interpretation has several consequences. { steven 1 } OCD can change and effect a persons life in many ways sometimes alienating them from their friends and family. Many sufferers with OCD are never diagnosed because they are so secretive about their symptoms. They are afraid to let people know and are even embarrassed about their compulsive reactions.
Some of the most common obsessions of OCD in children are extreme concern with order, concern that a task or assignment has been done poorly or incorrectly, concern with certain sounds or images, fear that a disaster will occur, there is also the fear of AIDS, fear of getting dirty, fear of losing important things, recurring thoughts, and a fear of saying something wrong. It is a fact that approximately one million children and adolescents in the United States alone suffer from OCD. This means that 3 to 5 children in an average elementary school and 20 teenagers in a large high school are currently suffering. OCD effects adolescents during an important time of social development.
School work, homework, and friendships are affected most often. Most children are to young to realize that there obsessions and compulsions are unusual. Adolescents are embarrassed because they dont want to be different from other people and they worry uncontrollably about their behavior. These adolescents usually hide their rituals in front of friends at school or at home and become mentally exhausted and strained.
Children and adolescents that suffer from OCD are different from adults because they express their disorder in special ways. Young children often say their rituals are silly. Young childrens OCD is never really recognized by their parents until they are about 3 or 4 sometimes even older. To get a proper diagnoses the child should be brought to a doctor or psychiatrist. While a child is at school they usually erase and redo their assignments which usually results in late school work. Classroom concentration is usually limited because a child is obsessing about their fears and rituals.
Parents should tell a childs teacher about the OCD and may ask for occasional progress reports. OCD is not contagious and parents are often blamed for the disorder they are said to have parental perfections, inappropriate toilet training, or even under parenting. The cause for OCD is neurobiological. Although life events can also aid in the onset of OCD. Childrens OCD is often said to be started by a death of a loved one, a divorce, moving to a new location, or unhappiness with changes in school. Checking compulsions are rituals that are precipitated by fear of harm to oneself or others and this includes the checking of doors, locks, heaters, alarms, faucets, switches, and other objects that could be a threat.
This can create problems for the learning of a child. For example while getting ready for school a child may check his or her books several times to make sure they are all there even to the point where the child is late for school. Once the child is in school they may call to return home and check their books once more. These rituals may also interfere with the completion of homework. This could make a child work late at night to complete an assignment that could have taken ten minutes to complete. Repeating compulsions are rituals in which some one repeats a certain action over and over again.
These rituals can in some cases be anxiety driven and in other cases have to be done just so. For instance a person might walk backward and forward or get up and down from a chair many times until the ritual is performed just right. These rituals are also connected with counting rituals. In children the rituals can assume many forms in the classroom.
This could lead to many repeated questions because the child may need to remember or know something. On written assignments the student could endlessly cross out, trace, or rewrite letters or words. Lockers can also cause a problem because the combination may need to repeated several times till it feels right. Note taking is most likely impossible because the student is compelled to take every word down. Computer scored tests are a nightmare because the student has to fill in the circles perfectly. Approximately 80 percent of children and adolescents with OCD at some point during their illness will develop a washing or cleaning ritual.
The most common compulsion is hand washing. An individual may feel compelled to wash their hands extensively and according to a self-prescribed manner for minutes or hours at a time. Other individuals may be less thorough about washing or cleaning but may engage in the act a number of times a day sometimes even hundreds. During school these rituals may manifest themselves in the school setting as subtle behaviors not obviously or immediately related to washing or cleaning. The students teacher should be alert if the student frequently excuses themselves from the classroom under voiding or guise.
This child could actually be seeking a private area in which to carry out the cleaning rituals. Another sign is the presence of dry, red, chapped, cracked, or even bleeding hands. Bleeding hands are a result of washing with strong cleaning agents such as Mr. Clean to free themselves of contaminants. Although contamination fears frequently lead to excessive washin...
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Research essay sample on People With Ocd Children And Adolescents
