Word: ocd
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...series of experiments, for instance, Jeffrey Schwartz and colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) can quiet activity in the circuit that underlies obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), just as drugs do. Schwartz had become intrigued with the therapeutic potential of mindfulness meditation, the Buddhist practice of observing one's inner experiences as if they were happening to someone else...
...When OCD patients were plagued by an obsessive thought, Schwartz instructed them to think, "My brain is generating another obsessive thought. Don't I know it is just some garbage thrown up by a faulty circuit?" After 10 weeks of mindfulness-based therapy, 12 out of 18 patients improved significantly. Before-and-after brain scans showed that activity in the orbital frontal cortex, the core of the OCD circuit, had fallen dramatically and in exactly the way that drugs effective against OCD affect the brain. Schwartz called it "self-directed neuroplasticity," concluding that "the mind can change the brain...
...Though it may be a bit wordy, Fun Home's depiction of a love-starved childhood leaves a lasting impression. Bechdel recalls her period of OCD, her father's arrest for buying an underage boy a beer, and family trips accompanied by male baby-sitters with as much of a sense of their tragedy as their dark comedy. She will slip in the occasional sick joke amid the scenes of frustration and bewilderment. Loaves of Sunbeam bread repeatedly make appearances, for example, echoing her father's eventual demise by being run over by a truck from that same company. Gradually...
...deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)--selective mutism gets less attention and considerably fewer research dollars. "These children are ignored because, let's face it, they aren't causing anyone trouble. They are literally left alone and forgotten about," says psychologist Lindsey Bergman, associate director of the UCLA child and adolescent OCD [obsessive-compulsive disorder] and anxiety disorders program...
Orman admits her unstinting focus isn't easy on friends. "They say, 'Oh, she's just being OCD again.'" But the finance queen makes no apologies: "It just works...