Did I lock the front door? Turn off the stove? Lock the windows?  These are some questions many of us ask ourselves on a daily basis as we jump in our car to leave.  It’s natural to run the checklist through your head a few times and eventually the concern fades and we carry on with our day. Some people perform a checking routine to make sure that a window is locked, a door is shut so they can leave the house knowing that everything is fine. Others never think about such matters; they just leave with the assumption that everything is as it should be.

Obsessive compulsive disorder is characterized by obsessive thoughts and compulsive actions related to germs, cleaning, counting, checking and re-checking, and hoarding.  An obsession is a persistent series of disturbing thoughts that intrude on the mind and seem to have a life of their own. The subject of these thoughts has to do with extreme concern and fear that harm will come to oneself or others due to forgetting to perform an everyday action like locking a door or checking to see if an appliance is off or due to some form of contamination.  Obsessive thoughts are followed by compulsions that attempt to alleviate the severe psychological pain of this persistent thinking pattern.  These can be a series of repetitive behaviors like washing and re-washing of hands, re-arranging objects so they are lined up perfectly, checking and re-checking to make sure that any possibility of harm to oneself or others has been totally eradicated.

Many people who do not understand this disorder or do not suffer from it have a difficult time understanding why someone would continue these rituals. They see it as a waste of valuable timeand insensible. Once you have locked a door, you move on and forget about it.

Obsessive thoughts and compulsive actions are psychologically very painful. Some sufferers are so distressed by this disorder that they suffer insomnia and inability to think about anything else. They are immobilized. The compulsive behavior appears to lessen the obsessive thinking. But this is very temporary. The thoughts quickly return, followed by the persistent rituals and the cycle is renewed and appears to have no ending point.

The origins of this disorder are still being studied. Recently, there was strong scientific evidence that obsessive compulsive disorder has neurobiological roots. The brain chemistry of individuals with OCD is different from those who do not suffer from this disorder.

Current treatments for OCD include behavioral therapy and more specifically, exposure therapy. Under the instruction and guidance of a trained psychotherapist the client is gradually exposed to those objects or situations he fears most. In subtle gradations the client learns that he can tolerate exposure to the feared objects or situations.

For those of whom exposure therapy does not work, some OCD sufferers have benefited from taking serotonin re-uptake medications. The gradual increase in serotonin has a beneficial effect upon the obsessive-compulsive cycle.