Question

In the movie As Good as It Gets, Jack Nicholson starred as a man who suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder. As the movie opens, he washes his hands in a practiced ritual, one of the common compulsions of this disorder. What other symptoms do people with OCD experience? What evidence of a brain abnormality has been found to explain some cases of OCD?

Answer 1

Individuals suffering from OCD have symptoms that are in form of Obsessions and/or Compulsions.

Obsessions are uncontrollable intrusive thoughts.People with OCD are preoocupied with these thoughts and need some distraction in form of compulsions to relieve their anxiety temporarily. Some signs can be-

• Fear of having germs on their body or being immoral, without any evidence.
• Ritualized and elaborate way of washing/wiping hands, face or surfaces around them to reduce the fear of germs.
• Checking behaviour- constant fear and feeling of irresponsibility leads to checking if doors are locked, stove is turned off, switches are off or not.This not done once or twice but several times tonan extent that it takes up most of their time in a day.
• Doing daily actions in a fixed numeric pattern, like rubbing soap in the same direction , a fixed number of times while bathing daily.Counting money several times before any transaction.Only doing actions like walking or eating according to pre- decided numbers.example- walking 5 steps at a time, eating and chewing one part of meal for 5 minutes.
• Feeling of anxiety when things are not symmetrical, or organized in a pattern and the constant need to fix things to the level of perfection, taking most of the timebin a day.
• Uncontrollable thoughts about violence, sexual thoughts or religion.
• Need for constant assurance from others by asking a lot of questions.

Studies have shown that people with OCD often have abnormalities in the orbital cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex and structures such as the Basal Ganglia and Thalmus.The communication between these parts of the brain does not functioning properly.This communication error between front part of brain and deeper structures has been found to be effected by dysfunction in the serotonergic system.