Search Results - Obsessive-compulsive disorder

Obsessive-compulsive disorder affects roughly six million Americans. Its symptoms, ranging from repetitive hand-washing to preoccupation with sexual, religious, or aggressive impulses, wreak havoc in people's lives, and often cause severe emotional and economic loss.

Sufferers often try to hide their compulsive behaviors from others, in order to avoid embarrassment, humiliation or being seen as strikingly odd or different. If the condition is not realized by an undiagnosed sufferer, they may scold themselves as to why they are thinking or acting the way they are. Although the acts of those who have OCD may appear paranoid and come across to others as psychotic, an OCD sufferer is able to recognize their thoughts and subsequent actions as irrational, which is what makes the illness so distressing. The psychological self-awareness of the irrationality of the disorder may be painful; sufferers are plagued by doubt and uncertainty regarding their feelings and behaviors. A principal challenge faced by some OCD sufferers is learning to manage their behaviors without constant reassurance from others.

OCD is the fourth most common mental disorder and is diagnosed nearly as often as the physiological ailments asthma and diabetes mellitus.^[1] In the United States, one in 50 adults has OCD.^[2] The phrase "obsessive-compulsive" has become part of the English lexicon, and is often used in an informal or caricatured manner to describe someone who is meticulous, perfectionistic, absorbed in a cause, or otherwise fixated on something or someone.^[3] Although these signs are often present in OCD, a person who exhibits them does not necessarily have OCD, and may instead have obsessive–compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) or some other condition.