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Obsessive-Compulsive disorder is a very common disorder among adults. There are many people in this society who do not realize that children can also get this certain disorder. This disorder affects about two or three people out of every hundred. The two main symptoms are obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions are upsetting thoughts, pictures that keep coming into your mind even though you do not want them to. Compulsions are repetitive behaviors (e.
g. hand washing, ordering, checking) or mental acts (e. g. praying, counting, repeating words silently) that the person feels driven to perform in response to an obsession, or according to rules that must be applied fanatical. (Levenkron, 1991) For the remainder of the paper, I will be exploring the causes and the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder in children and adolescents, and giving examples of Children and adults with OCD have similar obsessions and compulsions. Approximately eighty percent of adults with this disorder have their onset during their childhood or teenage years. The sad thing that I feel is that there are not enough studies done on children and teenagers to learn more about the disorder that many of these juveniles acquire.
I believe that if there were more studies done on children who are either depressed or obsessive over something then some of these problems could get Some of the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder in children and teens are; adolescents are that they are afraid of getting dirty or catching germs and they may spend a lot of time worrying about lucky and unlucky numbers. These children also spend an abundance of time trying to make everything around them perfect. Just about everyone thinks about things like this but, children with OCD worry so much about these that they are on their mind the whole day everyday. Every second of the say they are thinking about this and trying to fix things in their mind that sometimes are not fixable. The more that someone with this disorder does this the more uncomfortable they feel. Children often ask the question, "Can I catch OCD?" If they hear about the disorder they There are very few causes of this disorder.
Basically there is no simple way to explain the causes of OCD. No one is exactly sure what the accurate causes are, but through learning more about it and doing more studies there are some things that doctors would say that are the causes. It is the thought that the causes are a combination of both mental and physical factors. Physically a chemical in your brain, called serotonin, may play a role. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter. People with obsessive-compulsive disorder may not have enough of this in their brain.
This is the reason that medicines that increase the amount of serotonin in the brain can decrease the symptoms of OCD. Compulsive rituals actually strengthen the disorder because although the rituals are not "pleasing" to the person, they actually reduce the anxiety caused by the obsessive thoughts (American Family Physician, 1998). Any ritual that helps the anxiety "go away" is likely to be repeated. When ever someone performs a compulsive ritual, they avoid having to actually face the thing or things that they are afraid of.
For example, if a child were to wash their hands aver and over, they do not have to worry about getting dirty or catching any germs. Another example is that if someone with OCD repeatedly checks to make sure that their door is locked, they do not have to worry about the door being unlocked. This helps to sustain obsessive-compulsive disorder because to overcome a fear, one must face that fear. I believe that many parents do not look for this disorder in their children because they do not want to "face the music" if their children do have OCD.
It is my feeling that many parent think that this could never happen o their child although it could really happen to anyone, no matter who they are. There are some treatments for obsessive-compulsive disorder in children. One treatment is the serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) sertraline. This a safe and effective short-tern treatment for children with OCD.
The recommended initial doses are twenty- five mg once daily for children who are between the ages of six and twelve, and fifty mg a day for teens between thirteen and seventeen (Bradbury, 1998). The efficacy of exposure and responsive prevention and the potential contribution of parental involvement in treatment were investigated for four children with principal DSM-III-R diagnoses of OCD referred to the Center for Stress and Anxiety Disorders, Child and Adolescent Fear and Anxiety Treatment Program. Monitoring consisted of parent and child diaries of obsessive-compulsive symptoms and daily child Subjective Units of Distress (SUDS) ratings for a ten-item hierarchy. Results through twelve-month follow-up suggest that exposure and response prevention with parental involvement shows promise in the treatment of childhood treatment. (Knox, There are other remedies for people with this disorder, but children would not be equally responsive to the same treatment as an adult would.
There is behavior therapy which specifically includes exposure with response (ritual) prevention, which is the most effective treatment currently available (Tompkins, 1999). In this type of therapy, individuals expose themselves gradually to the fear that they have. As their treatment progresses, individuals gradually experience less anxiety and fewer urges to ritualize. Medications have proved effective in controlling OCD symptoms. However, many people relapse when they stop taking their medication.
For this reason, many clinicians recommend behavior therapy, or behavior therapy and medication. Some of the time, people may find that their obsessions and compulsions are weaker and do not happen as often, but they may not completely go away. I think that if behavior therapy is working as well as they say then children should not have to go on any medication. Why make the child take medication when there is a risk of addiction or overdose? If therapy is just as effective, if not more, than I think that a parent should have their child go through therapy rather than taking any medication at all. I have a couple of examples of children who have this disorder.
The first example is an eleven-year-old boy named Corey Hobbs who is from Dallas, Texas. He began treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder when he was only nine-years-old (Emilie, 1999). At that time he said, "I want to know more about it. " He now says "I didn't know anything about it, either, but now I've learned a lot. " It was his mother who noticed it first. It started out that school was getting to be a problem. He was still getting A's, but he was obsessed with doing more and more. If he could not finish a test, he would get really upset and keep saying, "I have to finish, I have to finish!" He said that he also knew that he was depressed.
All he wanted to do at home was clean and clean. He never wanted to go outside and play with his friends. Besides cleaning, Hobbs was obsessed with touching and rearranging things. He would always smell unpleasant odors because they bothered him so much. He became overly upset when his friends behaved in ways that he did not approve. Hobbs was treated with behavior therapy and medication and is doing quite well.
He has learned to balance doing homework and playing with his friends. Another example is a fifteen-year-old girl named Olivia. Olivia would take shower for at least an hour and a half every night. After that she would arrange her books for an hour before she would start he homework. When her homework was complete- about midnight-she starts her selection of the clothing that she is going to wear the next day which would take her about an hour.
She would get up really bright and early the next morning, but by the time she would get to school the next morning, after all of her rituals, she would be a half-an-hour or so late to her first class. Olivia is going through behavior therapy and doing respectably well. All in all, I have learned a lot about obsessive-compulsive disorder in children. In this term paper I have showed that there are many symptoms, few causes, and even treatments for this disorder.
Children who have this disorder and far and few between, compared to adults, but doctors are finding more and more cases a day. By addressing this problem of our society today, less children will feel like they are "going crazy." Bibliography:
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Research essay sample on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder In Children
