What is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and How do you treat It? - Dr. Kiran Kumar K | Doctors' Circle
Dr. Kiran Kumar K | Appointment booking number: +91-9663516934
Consultant Psychiatrist & Director | The Nirvana Center, Marathahalli, Bangalore
What is OCD? OCD is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It is one of the most common psychiatric disorders that we encounter. OCD is see both in children adolescence and eve in geriatric population. What does OCD mean? It has obsession and a compulsion. So what is an obsession? Obsession is a repetitive intrutive thoughts or images or ideas. That is an image or thought keeps on coming repeatedly to an individual the individual acknowledges the fact that is irrational, it is excessive and it procures distress to him or her but unfortunately the patient cannot control it, the common thoughts that come is obsession of contamination. Obsession of harming others or self. Obsession or blurting out something or obsession of images, particularly blasphemous images. What is a compulsion? Compulsion is a motor component of Obsession, that is following an obsession, the person tries to undo the obsession. For example of a contamination exists, the patient tries to undo cleaning excessively, by repetitive cleaning. Sometimes it can be repetitive counting sometimes it can be symmetry . Both put together is a syndrome of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. So how common is this? Obsessive Compulsive Disorder can occur in about 3% of the population. It has a very wide spectrum. It can be very mild in one end of the spectrum, very severe and incapacitating at the other end, why do people suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? Like any psychiatric disorder Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is multifacatorial in etiology, that is there. There is biological factors that includes pathologies of the brain, lot of chemical changes in the brain, lot of psychological factors. Infact OCD is one psychiatric disorders that has more neurobiological factors and it is comorbid and various other disorders.
How do we treat this? Treatment is multimodal. We have psychopharmacological medications, where medications are there which predominantly work on the serotonin system are used. We have psychotherapeutic principles like cognitive behavior therapy and behavioral principles like exposure and response prevention. W e also have other modalities which include yoga and meditation, regular food intake. So basically a combination of all these approaches with adequate care from mental health professionals, then OCD is definitely treatable and curable to a greater extent.
