Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a psychological disorder in which a patient has obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions are thoughts, images, or urges that come repeatedly. Compulsions are actions that are taken to escape from that repeated thought. If you or someone you know is struggling with OCD, seeking help from the best addiction treatment center in Lahore can provide valuable support and guidance on the journey to recovery. For example, a person repeatedly thinks his hands are not clean. Due to this repeated thought, he will be unable to do other things, so he will do an act so that this thought can go away. He will wash his hands, but after this compulsion, he will again think that his hands are not clean. Let’s take another example: a person has a repeated urge to know whether he has locked the door or not. The complex behaviors of personality disorders like OCD reveal the tough patterns and managing mechanisms that force them. With compassionate treatment, the psychology behind these disorders can be better understood. This is an obsession that he is unable to focus on another thing. His thinking is obsessed with whether the door is locked or not, and then he will a compulsion to check the lock again and again.
Diagnostic Criteria:
The diagnostic criteria of obsessive-compulsive disorder is
- Person having obsessions
- A person having compulsions or both
- These compulsive behaviors are time-consuming.
- The functioning of the person’s life is disturbed due to obsession and compulsions.
Showering, brushing teeth, and other grooming procedures, as well as hand washing, irrationally counting things, cleaning one’s residence or workplace, arranging items in a particular order (by, for example, color or size), examining the work for errors, checking for defects in one’s physique, skin, or hair, repeatedly arranging things in order examining one’s activities repeatedly to determine if they have caused harm to another person or a sin, repetition of actions or motions, such tapping a foot or stepping steps, a predetermined number of times, acquiring or hoarding things that are of little or nothing to anyone else are common features of obsessive-compulsive disorder. The causes of personality disorders like OCD are complex, involving both genetic and environmental factors. Understanding the roots of obsessive thoughts and compulsive rituals is vital to effective treatment.
Compulsions are time-consuming in a way that the person will spend 2 to 3 hours in a day. The functioning will be disturbed in a way that if you have disorganized thoughts, you will be unable to focus on other things.
Association between Addiction and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder:
Addiction has a similarity with obsessive-compulsive disorder. In addition, they are thinking of drugs, but they are not able to do other things because their brain chemicals are imbalanced. Thinking about drugs again and again is an obsession, and doing an act on this thought is a compulsion, such as doing drugs. Another criterion of obsessive-compulsive disorder is that these symptoms are not due to any physiological disorder. Crystal meth addiction causes profound changes in brain chemistry that drive obsessive drug-seeking thoughts and compulsive use. Effective treatment must address both the physical and psychological components of this destructive addiction.
The etiology of obsessive-compulsive disorder is still unknown, but research suggests that different factors play a role, such as genes. The onset of obsessive-compulsive disorder is 19 years, which is the average onset. After the age of 40, it is rare. If we talk about the treatment of OCD so that all mental disorders are not curable, all are manageable. Medicines and psychotherapy are effective in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder, especially cognitive behavioral therapy. Sadaqat Clinic is the rehabilitation center in Karachi, where professionals are experts in giving services related to all mental health problems.
Prevalence ratio:
If we talk about the prevalence ratio of obsessive-compulsive disorder, it is approximately 2% of the population suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder. A person having obsessive-compulsive disorder affects life quality and well-being badly. Hoarding, intrusive thoughts, fear of contamination, symmetry orderliness, concern with checking examples of obsessive-compulsive disorder. All mental health disorders, including obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), have a connection to addiction. Substances or behaviors that offer an escape from their symptoms may be used by OCD sufferers. OCD frequently runs in families, just like many other types of mental disease. The likelihood of getting the disorder increases if you have a parent, brother, sister, or other close blood relative who has it. There is no known gene associated with OCD. Other hypotheses suggest that a disease experienced as a child or exposure to poisons in the environment are the causes of OCD. Since no single idea has been proven to be accurate to date, it is more likely that OCD results from a variety of variables.
Anxiety disorders like OCD are characterized by disturbing, intrusive thoughts. A person might, for instance, frequently experience intrusive thoughts about a stranger breaking into their home. The “obsessive” aspect of the disorder is this. Many OCD sufferers respond by engaging in behaviors that reduce the anxiety brought on by these thoughts. They might continually check to see if the doors are locked, for instance. The “compulsive” aspect of the illness is this.
These recurrent actions may appear to an observer to be addictions. Additionally, even while compulsion and addiction can coexist, they are not the same. Addiction is a frequent problem in general, but it is particularly common in people with serious mental illnesses like OCD.
Estimates of the proportion of OCD sufferers who are also addicts range widely. In a 2019 study, 38,157 veterans with OCD were monitored by the researchers. 36.7 percent of people had a substance use issue. These drugs were most frequently used:
Alcohol: 17.1%, cannabis: 5.5%, opioids: 3.6%, cocaine: 3.37%, amphetamines: 1.5%, cannabis: 26.5%, tobacco: 26.5%.
OCD sufferers may be aware that their actions and beliefs are unreasonable or nonsensical. Although the exact causes of OCD are unknown, the disorder has been related to neurochemical imbalances that prevent certain brain regions from communicating with one another. People should know about the introduction of obsessive-compulsive disorder, if they know the introduction, they can easily tackle the disease, and it will help them to get away from this habit. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, vasopressin, a hormone that affects fluid regulation and cellular function, and serotonin, a neurotransmitter involved in emotional regulation, moods, metabolism, and sleep patterns, have been specifically linked to OCD behaviors and thought processes. OCD sufferers have also been found to have structural flaws in the frontal lobes and basal ganglia, regions of the brain connected to cognition and movement. Some individuals with this illness exhibit compulsive behaviors that are reminiscent of those seen in conditions like Tourette’s syndrome, such as repetitive tapping, blinking, or other compulsive body motions.
Written By:
Naiza Parvaiz