OCD: New Treatments And Stories From The Trenches

By Jessica Alpert (@jessprk)
Oct 13, 2010, 3:50 PM
6 Comments

(Marmotto/Flickr)

Between two and five percent of Americans have obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), making it the fourth most common psychiatric diagnosis. Even so, it takes an average of 17 years from the onset of symptoms for patients to find appropriate treatment. A debilitating disorder, OCD affects up to four million people in the United States, as well as countless more friends, family and caregivers.

In recognition of National OCD Awareness Week, we explore some of the latest treatments for the disorder with a Boston doctor who’s one of the country’s top OCD specialists, and we speak with one local man who lives with OCD every day.

Guests:

Dr. Michael Jenike, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, chairman of the scientific advisory board for the International OCD Foundation
Jared Kant , graduate student living with OCD; author of “The Thought That Counts: A Firsthand Account of One Teenager’s Experience with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder”

Extras:

Jay

Can you speak to the relationship between OCD and Tourette’s Syndrome?
Maircie Wes…..

What about HOCD? guys who obsessively ask themselves?….Ho do I KNOW that I am NOT gay. Maybe there is a .001% probability that I AM a homosexual! There is always the doubt that I am 100% heterosexual.
I KNOW now that I am not gay. (five minutes later) Do I really KNOW that. Let`s see no. This gay porn does NOT excite me. Let me check again & again & again to make sure that I am not attraceted to boys or guys.
Let me look at that guy over there, does he turn me on.There is always the doubt. Let me check him out. I guess the girls would find him attractive, but I really do not.
comment: every person with hOCD is not gay,but how do we really KNOW that. KNOW that. What is “KNOW”???
http://DisorderThePlay.blogspot.com Hilary K. Actor

National OCD Awareness Week brings the announced return of “DISORDEr,” the play about Chronic Hoarding Disorder, a component of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). “DISORDEr, The Play,” sensitively and humorously illuminates hoarding issues. Uncannily recognizable and potentially alarming, hoarding becomes human in the character Pakrat Patty, the hoarder who comes out of the clutter closet live on stage.

“DISORDEr, The Play,” returns to the theater on Saturday, November 6, 2010, at 8 p.m., under the title, ’2 One Acts: “In PURSUIT of the ENGLISH” / “DISORDEr.”’ The Washington Revels hosts this performance in the Rehearsal/Performance Space at the new Revels facility, 531 Dale Drive, Silver Spring, MD 20910.

The double bill “2 One Acts” includes Kacser’s dramatization of 2007 Nobel Prize Laureate Doris Lessing’s memoir, “In Pursuit of the English,” bringing to life “Rose,” a woman who recalls with wit and pathos how she survived the World War II Blitz of London.

For more information, please go to: http://DisorderThePlay.blogspot.com/, and http://2reprises.blogspot.com/.

Thanks!
http://DisorderThePlay.blogspot.com Hilary K. Actor

Hey, Maircie, take a look at this story about HOCD:
http://www.ocdla.com/blog/sexual-orientation-hocd-gay-ocd-treatment-1010
http://www.abicord.com Graham W Price

OCD absolutely can be cured. We do it all the time. Don’t sit on it or hide it away; do something about it. And the early it’s attacked the easier it is to cure. I get so many patients who’ve sat on it for years before coming for help. If you know anyone showing minor symptoms, send them for treatment now and ‘nip it in the bud’ before it develops further. Graham W Price ; chartered psychologist and OCD specialist. Face to face treatments in London and Surry, UK ; phone and Skype-based treatments nationally and internationally. http://www.abicord.com; grahamprice@abicord.com
anonymous

Mr. Prince, the way you put it is as if Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is simple to handle, as if the disorder is a game – a puzzle – with the puzzle pieces all splattered out on the table to look at, so freaking simple to fix. ha. O.C.D. is a maze, twisting and turning and hurting you all of the way. O.C.D. is SHATTERING. And it is killing me day by day by day. 1/50 babies in a hospital will turn out diagnosed with O.C.D. later on, so, yes, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is fairly ordinary, yet, despite that, it is agonizing. I am THIRTEEN and struggling with it every day. My O.C.D. triggered insomnia and severe anxiety. I am in THERAPY and medicated. And, God, it hurts.

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OCD: New Treatments And Stories From The Trenches