OCD

• Characteristics of OCD:

  Emotional - anxiety/distress, guilt/disgust, depression

  Behavioural - compulsions (rituals), avoidance

  Cognitive - obsessive thoughts, selective attention
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) - a mental health condition where a person has obsessive thoughts and compulsive activity
• Obsession - unwanted and unpleasant thought (cognition), image or urge that repeatedly enters a person's mind causing feelings of anxiety
• Compulsion - repetitive behaviour or mental act someone carries out to temporarily relieve the unpleasant feeling brought by the obsessive thought
• DSM-V Categories of OCD:

  • OCD
  • Hoarding Disorder
  • Trichotillomania
  • Excoriation Disorder
• Gene - a part of the chromosome of an organism that carries information in the form of DNA
• Concordance rate - a measure of genetic similarity
• Dopamine - One of the key neurotransmitters in the brain, with effects on motivation and drive
• Neurotransmitter - Chemical substances that play an important part in the workings of the nervous system by transmitting impulses across a synapse
• Hoarding disorder - a subtype of OCD characterised by ongoing intrusive/compulsive thoughts around acquiring possessions
• Trichotillomania - mental health disorder where the individual compulsively pulls out their hair
• Excoriation disorder - body-focused repetitive behaviour
• Biological Approach to Treating OCD:

  • Drug therapy to correct the imbalance of neurochemicals to treat symptoms
  • SSRI's (3-4 months of daily use)
  • SSRI's alternatives
• aetiological heterogeneity - different combinations of genes cause different types of OCD in other people.
• Neural explanation of OCD:

  • the role of neurochemicals eg. serotonin and dopamine – levels associated with abnormal transmission of mood obsessive thoughts
  • structural deficits – abnormal functioning in the brain which processes unpleasant emotions causing an inability to filter small worries so worry circuit is overactive
  • damage to neural mechanisms due to breakdown of immune functioning, e.g. Lyme’s disease