OCD

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What is OCD?

In a simple explanation Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a common mental health condition in which a person has obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours.

Obsessive: Your thoughts get stuck on things that cause you anxiety
Compulsive: You do physical or mental actions to relieve that anxiety
Disorder: your obsessions and compulsions take up more than 1 hour each day, or are clearly excessive

OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) is a disconnect between certain parts of the brain. We all have a part of the brain known as the caudate nucleus, which basically acts as a "thought sorter." It tells us which thoughts to pay attention to and which thoughts are "trash" , or should be thrown away. Another vital part of the brain that plays a part in OCD is the basal ganglia. In most people's brains, the frontal lobe and the basal ganglia "interact" with each other.

For example, if you were to have a thought that you may have forgotten to turn the oven off, you would check the oven, and if it was turned off, the frontal lobe would signal the basal ganglia that the oven had been turned off. In OCD, this connection is damaged. So the person with OCD will check the oven, but then they will have to check it again. And again. And again until the anxiety is stopped, but that would only be for a while until you performed the next compulsion, or repetitive act done to rid the anxiety that you feel. This is because the frontal lobe attempts to signal the basal ganglia that you have turned the oven off, but it doesn't get the "message."

OCD can come in many different forms, such as checking, contamination fears, magical thinking, scrupulosity, morally "wrong" thoughts, hoarding, ruminations/intrusive thoughts, body focused obsessions, hypochondria, and symmetry/order. There are a lot of acronyms to describe these types of OCD, such as ROCD, POCD, SOCD, and HOCD.

In OCD, the sufferer has obsessions (thoughts that cause anxiety/discomfort). In order to relieve the obsession, they must perform a compulsion, since the basal ganglia never gets the signal from the frontal lobe that everything is okay.

Sometimes OCD can actually create false, or pseudo-symptoms. This is most common in hypochondria, when the person is obsessed with getting a certain health problem. For example, if someone with OCD was afraid of getting sick, they might wash their hands a lot because their brain perceives that there is something dirty on their hands. There isn't, but they have to keep washing them because the basal ganglia doesn't get the message that their hands are clean. To them, it feels like they need to wash their hands because there is something on them, even though they already washed their hands multiple times already.

One type of OCD that isn't talked about a lot is "Pure-O" OCD, where the person has more mental than physical compulsions. They might need to think a certain thought or resist a certain thought in order to relieve the anxiety caused by obsessions.

Sorry for the novel . I hope this helps make more sense of OCD, since it is hard to understand sometimes!

Novels are great if they are informative....like your "novel."