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Are you have ever fear of many dirt and germs adhering in all your body and keep washing it?
Then, you feel anxious and doubtful if you don’t check the door, stove over and over?
Or there is image in your mind to hurt someone that you love?

If one of these things happens many times over more than one hour per day, you should seek consultation and have treatment of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Before you doing a medical treatment, let’s look closer to this disorder.

What is OCD?
OCD is psychological illness which caused by anxiety disorder. A person with OCD, will be trapped in unwanted repetitive thought of things and show it into compulsive behavior. It is done for lessen the anxiety. Actually, they realize it is irrational and excessive but they are powerless to control it. Moreover, it can affect their social life and make dysfunction if late to have medical treatment.

How is the influence of OCD?
The National Institute for Mental Health reports that about 3% of people in the United States have OCD. Typical age of onset for boys is 6 to 15, while for women it is often later, between 20 and 30. Risk factors like genetic predisposition and environmental stress contribute to OCD. Also, OCD is more common among people of higher education, IQ, and socioeconomic status. Men and women, however, are affected equally. Though its course is chronic and usually lasts a lifetime, it is treatable with medication, behavioral therapy, and, in extremely rare cases, brain surgery. This disorder become more severe because most of patients do not realize it as a disorder and just think it as bad habit. But then it will be persistent and make guilty and shame felling, so they just keep silent and it will be overwhelm in their life.
What are the symptoms?
OCD symptoms can be obsession, compulsion or the both of them.

Is there any risk of having OCD?
The answer is YES. OCD can be severe and time consuming first, if the person feel more stressful. By the environmental condition that make pressure on them such as resentment or scolding from other people, school problems, abuse, etc they will think and behave more repetitive and it is very disturbing for them. Second, it is caused by genetic factors that affected someone to having OCD. Eventhough there still no accurate evidence, but obsessive – compulsive disorder has genetically relationship in their family. The person with OCD will have 25% chance of having OCD from their blood relative. Moreover, the twins person have bigger risk than fraternal relation. They have 70% chance of OCD between their twins, and 50% chance for fraternal twins. Women with OCD may experience a worsening of symptoms during pregnancy and postpartum. The arrival of a baby brings new responsibility, a new set of concerns, and changes in routine. While normal reaction to a newborn may include some anxiety, postpartum OCD features disturbing thoughts and excessive behavior regarding the baby’s well-being.

How to diagnose this symptom?
Most often people give a wrong diagnosis to OCD. It is because they equalize it with “perfectionist” person. In perfectionist, a person try to doing something perfectly but it has goal to reach it ex. arrange books in a desk orderly, always keep the house clean so they will feel comfortable. Different with OCD, the repetitive behavior that they are doing is irrational and do not have any purpose. They keep cleaning the house, arrange the books over and over because they try to vanish the anxiety by doing that things. It is excessive and time consuming because the person will doing that things one hour per day or more. If you feel disturbing by these behaviors and it affects your social life, it can be consider as having OCD. By consult with the psychologist, you will have an accurate diagnosis and the faster you trying for help, the better result will you get for re healing this disorder. The Yale Brown Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (YBOCS) can also used to make an early diagnosis.
The one thing that should put in our mind that, it is not shameful things, because many people are reluctant to seek help because they think they are irrational person. It is a disorder that can be cured if handle accurately and fast.

What are the causes?
OCD is causes by several factors, for instance :
Environment is considered as one of causes of OCD. It is because wrong social learning and imitation in the early stage. By having the bad experiences, social pressure, or hard discipline when still children, a person can have unconscious experiences and change into anxiety
Biological factors involving brain structure and activation are associated with OCD. Abnormalities of the frontal lobes, basal ganglia, and cingulum are common in people with OCD. Basal ganglia are involved in routine behaviors, like grooming, and the frontal lobes in organizing behaviors and in planning. The cingulum consists of fibrous bands that assist in communicating the brain’s behavioral and emotional messages. Support for its role in OCD is the fact that surgical severing of the cingulum has relieved and even cured people with the disorder.
The serotonin an abnormally low level of serotonin is perhaps the most well-established link between the brain and OCD. A person that have OCD produce insufficient serotonin. Serotonin is a chemical neurotransmitter that transmits information from one nerve to another throughout the brain. Because of that there are different pattern of brain activity between normal and OCD person. Therefore, there are drugs that used to treat OCD, known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), increase and sustain serotonin levels and reduce or eliminate symptoms.

Obsession
It affects a person by having persistent, repetitive of unwanted thoughts, ideas, or images that is irrational. It happens many times and they hardly to stop it.
The type of obsession such as :
• Fear of contamination or dirt
• Having things orderly and symmetrical
• Aggressive or horrific impulses
• Sexual images or thoughts
As the example, a person will be fear of contamination or dirt after holding money or shaking hands with people, or he keep thinking to hurt his child, etc.
In some case, OCD person will become worsen if they caught in under pressure condition and stressfulness.

Compulsion
Compulsion is repetitive behavior that occurred as controller of the obsessive thoughts.
Sometimes they realize that their behavior is unreasonable, but they could not stop it and become severe most of the time.
As with OCD obsessions, compulsions typically have type, such as:
• Washing and cleaning
• Counting
• Checking
• Demanding reassurances
• Performing the same action repeatedly
• Orderliness
OCD symptoms involving compulsions may include:
• Hand and body washing until your skin becomes raw
• Checking doors repeatedly to make sure they’re locked
• Checking the stove repeatedly to make sure it’s off
• Cleaning the floor over and over because you feel it still dirty

What are the treatments for OCD?
Behavioral therapy
Exposure and response is one of methods that used for OCD treatment in. It is done by make a prevention of “Though stopping” by with trying to be nearing to the objects of anxiety ex. after shaking hands with people, the OCD person try to focus that it will not harmful to him and avoid him to washing his hands regularly. The methods of Cognitive Behavior therapy (CBT) can be also one of choice that will help OCD person to release from his misery.
Pharmacological Therapy
Clinical trials in recent years have shown that drugs that affect the neurotransmitter serotonin can significantly decrease the symptoms of OCD. The medicine that can use to affect neurotransmitter such as the tricyclic anti-depressant clomipramine (Anafranil). It was followed by other SRIs that are called “selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors” (SSRIs) the other medicine that usually used in OCD treatment are are flouxetine (Prozac), luvoxamine (Luvox) and paroxetine (Paxil). Another that has been studied in controlled clinical trials is sertraline (Zoloft).

References
DSM IV –TR
Mental Health
Psychology today Article by: Indah K.L