About OCD

My knowledge on OCD is not great enough to pursue a project on it so I've been researching the basics into the disorder to begin with, I'll develop a more aggressive research plan when I feel as though I've covered the general aspects of what the disorder is about. I began by simply reading the definition of OCD and started looking into everything to do with it.

______________________________________________________________

Understanding Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a serious anxiety-related condition where a person experiences frequent intrusive and unwelcome obsessional thoughts, often followed by repetitive compulsions, impulses or urges.

The illness affects as many as 12 in every 1000 people (1.2% of the population) from young children to adults, regardless of gender or social or cultural background. In fact, it can be so debilitating and disabling that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has actually ranked OCD in the top ten of the most disabling illnesses of any kind, in terms of lost earnings and diminished quality of life.

Based on current estimates for the UK population, there are potentially around 741,504 people living with OCD at any one time.   But it is worth noting that a disproportionately high number, 50% of all these cases, will fall into the severe category, with less than a quarter being classed as mild cases.

______________________________________________________________

After reading this article that I found on http://www.ocduk.org/ocd, I was shocked to see that not as many people suffered from the disorder to what I thought, because I know many people with this disorder I must have assumed it was more popular to the public that what it actually is. 

OCD takes different forms, the 5 main forms are as follows:

-Contamination obsessions with cleaning/washing, people who suffer from this tend to obsessively clean their homes or hand after touching something as everyday as a door knob.
-Harm obsessions, people who suffer from this tend to be paranoid and constantly check to see if for example 'the cooker is switched off' as if they don't they think it will either harm themselves or others.
-Sexual/religious or aggressive themes (pure obsessions), people who suffer from this tend to experience intense thoughts of violence, attack, sexual aggression and other things like these, even if the sufferer knows they wouldn't go ahead with the acts, the thoughts are intense enough to force them into compulsions to relieve the thoughts.
-Ordering/arranging/counting compulsions, people who suffer from this type of OCD tend to be perfectionists when it comes to everyday life, nothing can be out of place. 
-Hoarding, OCD suffers tend to have the obsessional fear of losing items or possessions which may be needed one day as well as experiencing excessive emotional attachments to objects.

I'm interested in all aspects of OCD yet would like to focus on the contamination obsessions for this particular project because it's linked to something I've always wanted to explore, that is, the rapid spread/grown of germs, bacteria and disease in society and how it effect not only the lives of OCD sufferers but also the lives of people living without the condition, people who go about their day without worrying about the dangers on every surface that they touch.