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Essential Guide to OCD , livre ebook

Lion Hudson - Helen Poskitt

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82 pages

English

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Description

Are you living or working with someone who has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)? Perhaps it's your partner or child; a parent, close friend or work colleague? Diagnosed as often as diabetes, the condition can lead both sufferers and those around them to feel isolated. However, you are not alone. This practical guide enables families, carers and friends to provide invaluable support for those with OCD. It aims to inform those living alongside OCD about the condition and to provide clear and compassionate strategies for them. With this new understanding, readers will feel better able to cope better with OCD manifestations. Commonly-experienced emotions such as bewilderment, frustration and sadness will gradually subside. The Essential guide to OCD includes interviews with those at the rock-face: relatives, friends and colleagues of those with OCD. The latest medical advances and effective treatments, such as CBT, are also explored with insight from mental health professionals.

Informations

Publié par	Lion Hudson
Date de parution	17 avril 2013
Nombre de lectures	2
EAN13	9780745957159
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0450€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Dedication
To all the people living with OCD - I hope this book helps.
First, it s not your fault!
Secondly, take all the help the mental health people can give you - assuming it s a good team and they know about OCD.
Thirdly, if you are a carer, find something outside the home that inspires you or is an affordable indulgence.
Mother of a daughter with OCD

Text copyright 2013 Helen Poskitt This edition copyright 2013 Lion Hudson
The right of Helen Poskitt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Lion Books an imprint of Lion Hudson plc Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, England www.lionhudson.com/lion
ISBN 978 0 7459 5580 3 e-ISBN 978 0 7459 5715 9
First edition 2013
Acknowledgments Extracts from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: The Facts by Padmal de Silva and Stanley Rackman copyright de Silva/Rackman, 2009.
Extracts from JobAccess, an Australian government initiative: http://jobaccess.gov.au. Reprinted by permission of JobAccess, Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover image: iStockphoto/elapela
Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

What is OCD?

How Common is OCD?

Diagnosis and Misdiagnosis

What Triggers OCD?

Public Awareness

CHAPTER 2: OCD OBSESSIONS

Contamination

Causing Harm to Others or Self

Symmetry

Safe Numbers and Good Words

Scrupulosity/Religiosity

Sexual Themes

Rumination

Are OCD Sufferers Disabled?

CHAPTER 3: COMPULSIONS AND RITUALS

Fear of Contamination

Fear of Illness

Fear of Harming Others

Checking

Repetitive Action Rituals

CHAPTER 4: HOARDING

A Separate Condition?

Treatment

CHAPTER 5: TYPES OF TREATMENT FOR OCD

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)

Counselling/Psychotherapy

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

Alternative Treatments

Medication

CHAPTER 6: OTHER TREATMENTS FOR OCD

Hospital Treatment

Neurosurgery

Treatments to Avoid

Public Access to Treatment

CHAPTER 7: ADVICE FOR PARENTS OF CHILDREN AND TEENAGERS/STUDENTS WITH OCD

Diagnosis

Educating GPs

Family Dynamics

How to Treat OCD in Children and Teenagers

Coping Tips

Educating Schools

Helping a Teenaged Student

CHAPTER 8: INDEPENDENT ADULTS WITH OCD: ADVICE TO PARENTS, FRIENDS AND PARTNERS

Useful Tips

Misdiagnosis

Coping

What Help is Available?

CHAPTER 9: ADVICE FOR YOUNG CARERS

Looking After Yourself

What to Do to Help

CHAPTER 10: EMPLOYMENT AND THE WORKPLACE

Employers - UK

To Declare or Not to Declare

Employers - Australia

Employers - USA

ENDPAPER

APPENDIX A: OCD AND THE BRAIN

APPENDIX B: GENETICS

APPENDIX C: PARENTS AND THEIR CHILDREN

APPENDIX D: COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

USEFUL WEBSITES AND ORGANIZATIONS

NOTES
Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to all the selfless and cheerful OCD carers who made time to talk, bravely completed questionnaires, or welcomed me to their support groups. Without them, this book couldn t have been written. I also wish to thank the therapists who kindly contributed their time.
Most of the names of people mentioned in this book have been changed to preserve anonymity.
1
Introduction

This book is aimed at supporting relatives, friends and colleagues of people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). It will enable carers to better understand how they can help individuals they know who have the condition. There is little doubt that a hidden epidemic 1 of OCD exists, but there is hope for both sufferers and carers.
Is mental illness the last taboo subject? Not any longer. Public figures such as MPs, celebrities and other role models are increasingly confessing to mental health problems such as OCD and depression. This, along with increased scientific research, is greatly reducing the old-fashioned stigma and secrecy associated with mental illness.
OCD is associated with a high IQ. It is thought in retrospect that Darwin, Beethoven, Dickens, Michelangelo, Churchill and Einstein, among other luminaries, suffered from the condition.
This condition is becoming more visible via popular television series, for example Frasier, Monk and Friends . OCD also features in films such as As Good As it Gets, The Aviator and What s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?
WHAT IS OCD?
Robert Ackerman, an OCD expert, has memorably described OCD as a cult of one . It can be difficult for people who don t experience OCD to understand why someone they know is behaving oddly. OCD has been classified as an anxiety disorder. Whatever we feel as onlookers, mocking or ignoring or trying to minimize the anxiety felt by an OCD sufferer will not make them feel better - just the opposite. They are experiencing a personal hell, however normal they may appear.
Families and/or carers can help people with OCD enormously, by learning about the condition and offering practical and emotional support. Helping does not mean colluding with the OCD sufferer s rituals and worries; but it does mean being kind, patient, and supportive.
How does OCD affect sufferers?
Many of us entertain satisfying scenarios of a terrible end for the motorist who has just almost involved us in an accident - but the thoughts (and motorist) quickly and harmlessly depart. The significance attached to such an idea by someone with OCD is where the problem lies. Despite their efforts to confront or ignore disturbing thoughts - of which there may be many - the ideas constantly reoccur. OCD sufferers therefore can experience fear, disgust and anxiety on a daily basis.
A person with OCD often carries out repetitive rituals to try to neutralize such upsetting thoughts. However, these compulsive rituals only provide short-term relief. They can easily escalate in frequency from a few times per day to hourly, as the action - for example, hand-washing - becomes less effective at combating the person s distress and self-doubt. The hand-washing ritual may be completely unconnected to worries about hygiene.
Compulsive rituals by OCD sufferers can include: excessive cleaning, washing, checking, repeated requests for reassurance, and hoarding. Practices also include: showing an aversion to/preference for certain numbers; repetitive nervous actions such as switching lights on and off; checking that taps and cookers are turned off; entering and leaving rooms; checking the locks on doors. Note the italics above - there s nothing wrong with having a clean body, taking precautions against fire or flood, or checking that you ve done your best to thwart burglars. The problem arises when the behaviour causes the individual with OCD to stop functioning adequately in daily life.
Few emotional disorders are as devastating as OCD. Patients often have difficulty with work, school, and in maintaining social and emotional relationships. When describing OCD, sufferers speak of being hyper-aware of everything happening around them. This naturally generates tension. Then factor in the brain sending false messages of danger to the person, in the form of obsessions, and stress predominates. Dr Jonathan Abramowitz, an OCD expert, says: Sufferers undertake a measureless struggle [against] recurrent thoughts, images, impulses and doubts that, although senseless on one hand, are perceived as danger signs on the other. When individuals can get a grip on their OCD - it is not easy - they recognize and re-label these false messages as just an OCD thought , or powerless ghosts and goblins . 2 They then understand that despite their nightmarish thoughts, nothing dangerous has happened after all.
In 1875, Legrand du Saulle referred to OCD as the folie du doute - the doubting disease . Someone with OCD constantly doubts themselves, largely because their normal common sense is overwhelmed by sudden terrifying thoughts. It is very difficult for an OCD sufferer to access enough inner calmness to put these thoughts into perspective at the time. When an OCD moment hits, the person experiences the same panic as a parent would on seeing their child running into a busy road. It s easy, though, for an onlooker to underestimate the terror someone with OCD is experiencing, as sufferers understandably try to conceal it.
People with OCD may also ruminate . This is when thoughts keep recurring for no apparent reason and revolve around a common theme. There is little difference between ruminations, obsessions and worries. They all trigger iterative (repetitive) thinking.
If we were to summarize in a simple format the thought processes of people suffering from OCD, it would run like this: worries typically focusing on daily concerns obsessions which may be more intrusive than worries obsessions then lead to compulsions and rituals (Turner et al. , 1992).
What links them all is anxiety . Altering the relationship between obsessions and compulsions centres on reducing this anxiety (Hodgson & Rachman, 1972; Rachman et al. , 1976).
OCD isn t made any easier to understand by the changeability of the symptoms. Many sufferers may only have one pattern or ritual of OCD behaviour throughout their lives; for instance, checking too often that the front door is locked. Others will have multiple obsessions and compulsions, such as checking, hoarding, washing, and contamination fears. Someone who has intrusive thoughts in adolescence may turn to washing excessively in early adulthood, and then become a checker in later life. On the other hand, many