Free Essays,College Free Essays,Free College Essays at Anti Essays

Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. This may sound like a skipping record, but it is not. Tragically, it is just one of the many intense rituals that may plague the mind of someone who has Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, or OCD. Perhaps what is worse though is that these people are widely misunderstood, especially as children and teenagers. If the public was more educated about the causes, behaviors, and treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, the people who suffer with it would not have to suffer in silence.

This disorder does not only plague adults, it can start very early in childhood, and it impacts every aspect of what we know as normal life. A few years ago, a young girl appeared on an episode of Oprah to tell her story.
Two weeks ago, we watched a movie about the life of three young people who was suffering from O-C-D for the majority of their life and did not know anything about it because, specialist had to many problems to diagnose the disease. The O-C-D turned the life of this young guys to a nightmare because they had to deal with all those disorder thinking that it was normal.
Until recently, not many people knew OCD was a treatable mental disorder. As of 1989, psychologists had only just learned the staggering number of people, both adolescents and adults who secretly suffered from OCD. Even ten years later the disorder was still new, but advances were being made in the understanding of it. According to Eric Hollander, a psychologist, they have only in the past fifteen years recognized the imbalance of neurotransmitters in the brains of OCD patients, and really seen it as a medical disorder, one that approximately six million Americans share (Hollander, 1999). Finally, at least those six million people know that they are not alone.


One common misconception is that stress causes OCD. While stress can strengthen the symptoms of OCD, many people who have it say their symptoms have no trigger...