Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a condition that can happen to anyone, regardless of age, sex or economical condition. It has been found that OCD is one of the 10 leading causes of disability around the world and just in the United States there are approx. 5 million people suffering this ailment. OCD manifests in the individual as the presence of persistent ideas, thoughts, images or impulses that are experimented as intrusive and alien to the person having them. This means that they are against the will of the individual and with themes that generally make the person suffer greatly. An important characteristic of this ailment is the obsession that accompanies the alien thoughts; this is they repeat themselves during long periods of time without the person being able to stop them and in occasions causing a great discapacity due to the amount of time dedicated to these ideas. These obsessions are frequently accompanied by behaviors that are also repetitive and perceived as useless at the beginning of the OCD condition manifestation and this is what is known as compulsions. Compulsive behaviors, as well as obsessions, consume lots of time and they are generally done as a response to the obsessions. This is because the compulsions diminish a bit the great anxiety felt by the person suffering the obsessive thoughts. Though this behavior is not the solution to the intrusive thoughts of the person suffering from OCD. On the contrary they only favor the continuing of the ailment making it even worse due to the simultaneous presence of obsessions and compulsions causing great suffering to the person. It is all this combined characteristics of obsessions and compulsions that is clinically characterized as the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). It is very important to mention that these words; obsession and compulsion, as used in the medical terminology related to this ailment, have a different connotation than when used in the everyday life when they refer to characteristics of the personality as perfectionism, perseverance, scrupulosity, etc. |
