Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Behavioural Characteristics: Repetitive Compulsions

Compelled to repeat a behaviour (e.g. hand washing, counting, praying & tidying/ordering objects).

Behavioural Characteristics: Compulsions Reduce Anxiety

10% of people w/ OCD show compulsive behaviour alone. Vast majority: compulsive behaviours reduce anxiety produced by obsessions (e.g. extensive hand washing = response to fear of germs.)

Behavioural Characteristic: Avoidance

Reduce anxiety through avoiding situations that trigger it. (e.g. hand washing → avoid germs.) This can lead to people avoiding regular, daily activities (e.g. taking out the bins.)

Emotional Characteristic: Anxiety & Distress

OCD = unpleasant emotional experience due to powerful anxiety accompanying obsessions/compulsions. Obsessions = unpleasant & frightening → anxiety makes these overwhelming. Urge to repeat a compulsion → anxiety.

Emotional Characteristic: Accompanying Depression

OCD is usually accompanied by depression, so the anxiety is alongside low mood and a lack of enjoyment in activities. Compulsive behaviour gives temporary relief.

Emotional Characteristic: Guilt & Disgust

OCD involves negative emotions like irrational guilt (e.g. over minor moral issues) or disgust (e.g. against something external, like dirt, or something internal, like oneself.)

Cognitive Characteristic: Obsessive Thoughts

90% of people w/ OCD have the major cognitive feature, obsessions, which are excessively repetitive, unpleasant thoughts (e.g. worries of being contaminated by dirt.)

Cognitive Characteristic: Cognitive Coping Strategies

Adopting CCS to cope with obsessions (e.g. religious person may pray or meditate to respond to obsessive guilt.) These can work, but may make people appear strange and can prohibit daily life.

Cognitive Characteristic: Insight Into Excessive Anxiety

People w/ OCD are aware their obsessions/compulsions are irrational and this is a necessary part in diagnosis, or else it would be a different mental disorder. They experience catastrophic thoughts of what their anxieties would result in, were they to be real. Tend to be hyper-vigilant.