Word: ocd
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...first, some clarification. Perfectionism can take many different forms, stemming from different aspects of a person’s personality. Perfectionism in its most extreme form is a manifestation of psychological disorder or neurosis—a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), perhaps. People who have this type of perfectionism could take up to 20 minutes to write a check or fill out a simple form because of the compulsive need to check, double-check, triple-check, quadruple-check their work and make sure that it is absolutely mistake-free. Neurotic perfectionists are unable to derive any sense...
...problem, though neither Andrea nor her teacher knew it, was that her adolescent brain was being tossed by the neurochemical storms of generalized anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)--a decidedly lousy trifecta. If that was what eighth grade was, ninth was unimaginable...
That's something Fallon realized a little more than a decade ago. He was studying obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) when he noticed it had a lot in common with hypochondria. "Both disorders," he says, "involve intrusive, worrisome thoughts, the need for reassurance and a low tolerance for uncertainty." Psychiatrists had lately come to think that OCD could be treated with Prozac and similar drugs, and Fallon decided the medications might work for hypochondria as well. With only 57 subjects, the study was too small to be definitive, but it was certainly promising: about 75% of those who got the drug...
...many in the placebo group, which led Fallon to take an even closer look. His conclusion: hypochondriacs may actually represent three different groups whose problems look superficially similar. Those in the first really do have a variant of OCD. Those in the second have a problem more like depression, often triggered by something that makes them feel guilty--an affair, perhaps--or by a loss, like the death of a close relative. And the third group consists of people who somatize--which means they focus an inordinate amount of attention on their bodies. A pain that most people wouldn...
...young woman who said she had a ritual before every final exam. There was a tree near Lowell House and she would run circles around it… alone. She thought that brought her good luck. I asked her if she had considered going to Health Services for OCD treatments, but she told me she was comfortable with...