Word: ocd
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...story of Adrian Monk--the protagonist of the hit detective show on the USA cable network--is not unlike the story of Monk the series. Monk, played by Tony Shalhoub, is a brilliant detective with a few quirks: after his wife was murdered, he developed obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Now he's germ phobic and afraid of heights--and milk. He can ID a criminal with little more than a sniff of the curtains at a murder scene, but put him near a couch with a crooked pillow, and he can't function until he straightens it. Because...
Granted, even most OCD sufferers do not have Monk's over-the-top problems. "We're taking dramatic license," says Shalhoub, who met several times with a psychologist while researching his part. "We're loading this character with just about everything a person like him can have." In a strange way, Monk's exaggerated condition makes his crime-solving genius more plausible. (More so than Monk's secondary characters, who too often have a cardboard, murder-mystery-dinner-theater feel.) It makes us see that Adrian Monk's talent--and that of the many fictional sleuths who preceded...
BOTTOM LINE: Some researchers question whether OCD is a genuine anxiety disorder. Whatever it is, it does respond to treatment--provided you seek help...
...sets anxiety alarms ringing, our first inclination is to find the off switch. Behavioral scientists take the opposite approach. They want you to get so accustomed to the noise that you don't hear it anymore. The standard behavioral treatment for such anxiety conditions as phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and panic disorder is to expose patients to a tiny bit of the very thing that causes them anxiety, ratcheting up the exposure over a number of sessions until the brain habituates to the fear. A patient suffering from a blood phobia, for example, might first be shown a picture...
...neurotransmitter serotonin, leaving more in nerve synapses and thus helping to improve mood. Another SSRI, Paxil, was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration specifically for the treatment of social-anxiety disorder, though the others seem to work as well. A third, Zoloft, has been approved for OCD and panic disorder. Each formulation of SSRI is subtly different--targeting specific subclasses of serotonin. And side effects--which can include dry mouth, fatigue and sexual dysfunction--will vary from person to person. A new group of antidepressants, known as serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, may be even more effective in treating...