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How Do I Know If I Have OCD?

A person with OCD may experience:

• Concern about contamination or serious illness.
• Too much concern with keeping everything arranged in an exact way.
• Horrible images.
• Sexual or religious thoughts felt to be unacceptable.
• Excessive fear of your house burning or flooding, of causing a car wreck, of spreading an illness, of losing something, of being responsible for another person getting hurt.
• Fear of harming another person or a member of one's family.
• Doing things over and over again.
• Avoiding colors or numbers associated with bad thoughts or dreaded events.
• Frequently feeling the need to confess something you did or to ask to be reassured that you did something the right way.

If these experiences take up a lot of time, distress you, or interfere with your normal activities — or if you find you have trouble controlling them — you should see a mental health professional.

What Are the Treatments?

Not every person with OCD responds to the same treatment. Treatment options include drug treatment as well as behavioral treatment. People with OCD should discuss treatment strategies with their therapists. For most people, a combination of these treatments works best.

Recent studies show that drugs that affect a specific brain chemical — serotonin — are particularly helpful in OCD. These include a class of drugs originally developed as antidepressants: the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. SSRIs approved by the FDA for treatment of OCD include Prozac, Luvox, and Paxil. Another being studied in clinical trials is Zoloft. While these drugs offer at least a little help for most people with OCD, they aren't a cure. When a person stops taking them, OCD symptoms often come back. Other medications may be used as well to supplement the SSRIs to help control symptoms.

Traditional psychotherapy aims to help a person develop insight into his or her problems. By itself, this generally doesn't help OCD. The use of various behavioral therapies can reduce OCD symptoms. Successful treatment reduces the anxiety caused by obsessive thoughts. This lets the person with OCD resist compulsive behaviors.