Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders

In the late 1980s, television talk shows saw a steady stream of people who talked about a condition that had nearly wrecked their lives--obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). They wanted to tell others about the disorder and present the hope offered by a new experimental drug.

Ten years ago, OCD was thought to be comparatively rare; however, as the response to TV talk shows demonstrated, thousands of people were suffering from the same disorder. Zamula (1992) notes that as many as five million people in the United States could suffer from OCD (p. 6). She goes on to give a good description of the actions once dubbed by Freud as "secret doings":

What are the "secret doings" that Freud spoke of? They are repetitive acts called compulsions, performed to relieve anxiety caused by excessive thoughts or urges or images. Individuals with OCD realize that these thoughts are senseless and struggle unsuccessfully to resist them. They know that the compulsive actions, or rituals, they perform are also senseless, but feel that if they don't do them, something bad will happen to them or others. (Zamula, 1992, p. 6)

The American Psychiatric Association outlines the essentia

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summary of the role of oxytocin: The scientists [at Yale University School of Medicine] measured oxytocin and vasopressin, a brain hormone also involved in grooming and social behavior that was implicated in OCD in an earlier study by researchers at the National Institute of Mental health in Bethesda, Maryland. In the new project, volunteers and their parents, siblings, and spouses provided information on any cases of OCD, Tourette's syndrome, or related conditions among family members [to rule out other hormone-disorder correlations]. All three groups displayed comparable vasopressin concentrations, but oxytocin rose dramatically in the 22 [out of 29] OCD sufferers who had no personal or family history of tic disorders. In this set of volunteers, those suffering the most severe OCD symptoms had the highest oxytocin concentrations. Preliminary data gathered by the same investigators also suggest that tic-related OCD most often involves compulsions to touch certain objects over and over, while non tic-related OCD more frequently includes contamination worries and cleaning compulsions. (p. 277) Researchers have found considerable evidence pointing to abnormalitites in functioning of one or more neurotransmitters, chemicals t
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1440
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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