Treatment For OCD: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a human anxiety disorder characterized by involuntary intrusive thoughts. When a sufferer begins to acknowledge these intrusive thoughts, the sufferer then develops anxiety based on the dread that something bad will happen. The sufferer feels compelled to voluntarily perform irrational, time-consuming behaviors to diminish the anxiety.

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 keep their compulsive behaviors hidden from others, often 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 in frustration 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; a sufferer may be plagued by doubt and uncertainty regarding his or her own feelings and behaviors. A principal challenge faced by OCD sufferers is learning to manage their own behaviors without constant reassur...