Thursday, March 25, 2010

The World of OCD

As I've mentioned before, I read and participate in several OCD-related online forums. The makeup of those forums is interesting: despite the fact the contamination OCD is said to be the most common form, it seems that 75% or more of the people who participate in the forums have other types, be it fear of harming others, or fear of being gay, or fear of having schizophrenia.

I can't tell if that means that the common wisdom about OCD is just plain wrong, or if people with contamination OCD are more likely to just put up with their OCD, or just think of themselves as neat freaks. Contamination OCD is crummy, but I know from my own experience that you can live a relatively normal life with it, even if it's not as full as the life you could live without it. I see this in OCD blogs as well, that about half the people with contamination OCD are reporting on their OCD, rather than reporting on their efforts to get rid of it.

As far as I can tell, the more "mind" based rather than "action" based types of OCD are more torturous for their sufferers (not that all kinds don't totally suck), so those people seem more likely to be searching for understanding or advice online.

I could be totally offbase, of course, as my sample is not a random selection, nor is it close to comprehensive.

Don't really have any point I'm trying to get to, just thinking on "paper" here.

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