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OCD is classified as an anxiety Disorder that involves repetitive obsessions or compulsions that are severe enough to be very time consuming or cause great difficulty in everyday life. Obsessions are intrusive thoughts or impulses, such as repetitive thoughts of abandonment, contamination, or reassurance. Compulsions, or what they are more communally called, rituals, are repetitive, intentional behaviors that a person feels they must do to prevent or neutralize a feared event. These rituals are most communally associated with the obsessions themselves. For example, a person might feel compelled to ask the same question several times about a situation to be reassured that indeed a certain situation will happen in a given amount of time. Other types of rituals my include repeating actions that neutralize the fear of something that may cause harm to that person also washing their hands excessively so that they may alleviate fears of contamination.
OCD was known to be a very rare mental disorder; it now seems to be an invisible epidemic sweeping the nation. It can be seen in over 6.5 million people worldwide, this makes it one of the most common mental disorders today. One in every forty people has this disorder and the symptoms of it show up in early childhood and become predominately intense as they get older. The symptoms of this disorder have been shown to be more frequent in male boys.
There are a wide range of symptoms that can affect men and women, also some people may exhibit different symptoms than other people do, so it can be difficult to generalize symptoms for this disorder. For example, one person may fear contracting a disease after touching something and use eight rolls of paper towels to clean her hands, while another person may count backwards from one hundred to one to avoid the urge to shout obscenities. Some symptoms that are also present in this disorder can include a person that can feel the need to check and recheck door knobs before being able to leave a room, and repeating this ritual if the task is not done correctly. This type of behavior can include a person that feels the need to get dressed in the same manor everyday, and if they are interrupted while they are doing this or some how do something wrong while getting dressed they fell compelled to start the entire task all over again. Most of the time these people feel that there actions are unreasonable or irrational yet they are still driven to do these rituals to manage their high anxiety.
Subjects with this disorder have been shown to have high levels of anxiety and these rituals that are associated with OCD are an attempt by the person to alleviate the anxiety that they feel. For example a person may feel the need to check things repeatedly, even after they have checked them several times before, to make sure that the electrical appliance or water has been in fact turned off. The person also may exhibit symptoms like needing to have things in perfect order, like the need to place silverware in line with and evenly beside a plate, and separating different fruits from each other and placing them in there own spot.
About this Author
Jesus is a great outdoors men and spends much of his time camping. He writes articles on a website at http://torolawnmowerpartssite.com where he writes about toro lawn mower parts.
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