What is OCD and it's symptoms and treatments
Added: (Tue Dec 27 2022)
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OCD is characterized by a pattern of unpleasant thoughts and anxieties (obsessions) that cause you to engage in repetitive actions (compulsions). These compulsive thoughts and behaviours disrupt daily life and create severe discomfort.
You could make an effort to suppress or dismiss your obsessions, but doing so simply makes you feel more upset and anxious. In the end, you get compelled to engage in obsessive behaviours in an effort to reduce your stress. Despite attempts to suppress or dismiss unwanted thoughts or desires, they persist. This feeds the OCD cycle, which results in more ritualistic behaviour.
OCD frequently revolves on certain themes, such as an obsessive fear of contracting germs. You may wash your hands excessively until they are painful and chapped in an effort to allay your anxieties of infection.
Even though OCD might make you feel humiliated and embarrassed, there are effective treatments available.
Get the best treatment for OCD at Mumbai at Amaha- Your Mental Health Partner.
Symptoms:
Obsessions and compulsions are frequently present in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder. However, it's also possible to merely have obsessional or compulsive symptoms. Your obsessions and compulsions may or may not be severe or irrational, but they nonetheless consume a lot of time and prevent you from going about your everyday activities and functioning in social, academic, or professional settings.
Obsession symptoms
Obsessions with OCD are intrusive, recurrent, unwelcome thoughts, desires, or visions that are distressing or anxious. You could try to avoid them or get rid of them by engaging in a routine or obsessive habit. These obsessions usually interfere with your ability to think clearly or complete other tasks.
Obsessions often have themes to them, such as:
Fear of contamination or dirt
Doubting and having difficulty tolerating uncertainty
Needing things orderly and symmetrical
Aggressive or horrific thoughts about losing control and harming yourself or others
Unwanted thoughts, including aggression, or sexual or religious subjects
Compulsion symptoms
Compulsions are recurrent activities that you feel compelled to carry out if you have OCD. These recurrent actions, whether physical or mental, are intended to ease tension brought on by your obsessions or avert negative outcomes. However, participating in the compulsions is unpleasant and may only provide a short-term reduction in anxiety.
When you are experiencing obsessive thoughts, you can create rules or routines that you must adhere to in order to manage your anxiety. These obsessions are excessive and frequently have no connection to the issue they are meant to solve.
As with obsessions, compulsions typically have themes, such as:
Washing and cleaning
Checking
Counting
Orderliness
Following a strict routine
Demanding reassurance
Treatments:
Treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder may not provide a cure, but it can help keep symptoms under control so they don't interfere with your everyday life. Some patients may require long-term, continuous, or more extensive therapy depending on how severe their OCD is.
Psychotherapy and medicines are the two basic OCD therapies. Treatment is frequently most successful when these are used in conjunction.
Psychotherapy
For many OCD sufferers, cognitive behavioural treatment (CBT), a kind of psychotherapy, is successful. As part of CBT therapy, exposure and response prevention (ERP) entails progressively exposing you to a feared item or fixation, like dirt, and teaching you how to manage the temptation to carry out your obsessive rituals. ERP requires work and practise, but once you learn to control your compulsions and obsessions, you could have a higher quality of life.
Medications
The obsessions and compulsions of OCD can be controlled with the aid of certain psychiatric drugs. Antidepressants are often used initially.
However, your doctor could also recommend psychiatric drugs and other antidepressants.
Other treatment
Psychotherapy and drugs may not always be sufficient to treat OCD symptoms. Other methods might be provided in instances that are resistant to treatment:
Intensive outpatient and residential treatment programs. People with OCD who struggle to function due to the intensity of their symptoms may benefit from comprehensive treatment programmes that stress ERP therapy concepts. These courses usually last for several weeks.
Deep brain stimulation (DBS). For persons 18 years of age and older with OCD who don't respond to conventional treatment modalities, the FDA has authorized DBS. DBS entails implanting electrodes in certain brain regions. Electrical impulses generated by these electrodes may help control aberrant impulses.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). When conventional therapy methods have failed to control OCD in individuals aged 22 to 68, the FDA authorized a specialized device (BrainsWay Deep Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation). TMS is a noninvasive treatment for OCD symptoms that stimulates brain nerve cells using magnetic fields. An electromagnetic coil is applied to your scalp near your forehead during a TMS session. Your brain's nerve cells are stimulated by a magnetic pulse delivered by the electromagnet.