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Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders
OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDERS
Obsessive-compulsive disorder or OCD is actually a group of disorders that involve intrusive and negative thoughts that lead to certain repetitive behaviors. While these types of things are common, having the disorder involves a disruption of one s life because of the disorder. Besides OCD itself, hoarding disorder and body dysmorphic disorder are under this umbrella of disorders.
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People who have OCD have thoughts or obsessions that are unwanted and intrusive. The behaviors that come out of this are called compulsions. Compulsions can be behaviors like hand washing or repetitive checking of things. The thoughts themselves are very distressing and often involve things like symmetry, germs, and doubts about something. Some patients will have an overlap in these obsessions. Compulsions are designed to reduce the obsessions but are not generally realistic or pleasurable.
Body dysmorphic disorder involves an obsession about a perceived flaw in the body that other people might not even notice. The patient feels ugly, deformed, or unattractive. Most of the fixations are on the face, the skin, or the hair. This leads to constant looking in the mirror and sometimes to extremes of cosmetic surgery. The incidence of the disorder is 2.4 percent and slightly favors women over men.
Hoarding disorder is different but related to OCD. The person cannot part with their personal possessions so that they live in extremely cluttered environments, often with the inability to use parts of their home. They ultimately believe that someday they will have use for the items or that the items have sentimental value.
OCD is moderately genetic and heritable, being much more common among relatives of those who have it. There are several genes that have been proposed to be causative of the disorder, which appears to affect the orbitofrontal cortex of the brain. Hoarding disorder is related to the anterior cingulate cortex and body dysmorphic disorder is related to the prefrontal cortex. All of these areas of the brain are within the frontal lobe. There might be some classical conditioning also involved.
