OCD Related Content

Everything You Need To Know About OCD in Kids and Teens

While working on a project together, you see a friend packing up their work supplies in a very neat fashion. You can’t help but point out that they’ve organized all their pens to be lined up in order of color and all facing the same direction in their box. “Oh,” they reply. “That’s just my OCD.”...

Understanding OCD and Religious Scrupulosity

When people have religious scrupulosity, one form of obsessive compulsive disorder, they experience significant doubt, anxiety, and distress about their moral beliefs or religious practices. For example, people who have scrupulosity may worry if they are performing the rites, observations, prayers...

Everything You Need To Know About OCD

We all experience anxiety, a feeling of dread that happens to be your body’s natural response to stress. It may be brought on by a variety of circumstances, including making an important decision, an upcoming test, or meeting someone new. If someone is living with an anxiety disorder like OCD, these...

Everything You Need To Know About Anxiety

When we think of “anxiety,” we tend to think about feeling stressed out. Actually, anxiety is our body’s reaction to a threat to our well-being. Without anxiety, we would not react when we are in danger, and we likely wouldn’t be alive today without it. However, anxiety can be so much more than...

Everything You Need To Know About Hoarding Disorder

Hoarding disorder is a mental health condition characterized by saving items that appear to have little or no worth, often accumulating magazines, mail, newspapers, and old clothing. Between reality TV shows and common misconceptions about the condition, hoarding disorder is deeply misunderstood by...

Everything You Need To Know About Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy

Obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD, is a serious condition that can disrupt someone’s daily life. It is marked by obsessions, or unwanted intrusive thoughts, and physical or mental actions taken to relieve anxiety associated with the obsessions. Exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy is...

What Is Sexual Orientation OCD?

Sexual identity is an important part of how we view ourselves. Most people have little trouble knowing who they find attractive. This may not always be easy, of course. Varying factors, like religion, community values, social fears, etc., may create obstacles for someone trying to actualize their...

McLean Hospital Offering Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Services in Houston

McLean Hospital, consistently ranked the #1 freestanding hospital for psychiatric care in the United States by U.S. News & World Report, has partnered with the Houston OCD Program, a national leader in the field of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) treatment. The McLean OCD Institute at Houston...

Turning a Childhood Dream Into a Career Helping Children With OCD

Maria Fraire, PhD , has known she wanted to be a therapist since she was eight years old. “People told me, ‘Oh, you’ll change,’ but honestly, I’m a bit tenacious,” said the incoming program director of McLean’s Child and Adolescent OCD Institute (OCDI Jr.). Fraire has been particularly interested in...

McLean and The Boston Foundation Team Up for Mental Health Education

Last month, in honor of World Mental Health Day on October 10, Sean Shinnock, a volunteer in McLean’s Deconstructing Stigma campaign, was invited to speak to employees of The Boston Foundation about mental health and the importance of getting help. Sean shared his story of living with severe OCD...

McLean Hospital’s Innovative OCD Program: Two Decades of Progress

Twenty years ago, McLean Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital launched the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Institute (OCDI)—an innovative and first-of-its-kind intensive treatment program for individuals living with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Since first opening its doors on the...

Patient Perspective: Reflections 20 Years After Seeking Treatment

At 22, Robin did the hardest thing she had ever done in her life: she confronted her fears. Her fear of God, her fear of unintentionally causing others harm, and her fear of germs—all caused by obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)—had robbed her of her teen years and she wasn’t going to let the...

How One OCD Patient Is Finding Hope

Katie Wilson is a former patient at McLean’s OCD Institute. I am six months pregnant and I am sleeping on a small patch of the living room floor, because every bed, sofa, or other surface in my home feels contaminated to me. Not safe. I am a trained and registered nurse, with a fear of blood that...

Keep Dreaming: One Patient’s Journey with OCD

Adira Weixlmann is a former patient at McLean’s OCD Institute (OCDI) Life transitions can be an intense combination of positive and negative. Change creates great excitement and hope for the future, but can also be riddled with intense anxiety and worry about the unknown. As an OCD (obsessive...

Earlier Treatment Promotes Better Lives for Young Patients With OCD

A young boy spent eight hours a day on rituals to ensure that his dog was safe, including securing windows and doors and patrolling his home for perceived danger. A teenager’s dread of contracting AIDS cut her off from ordinary experiences like a first kiss. Children and adolescents with obsessive...

Through a Mother’s Eyes: The Struggles and Triumphs of OCD

Lynette Peck is mother of a former patient at McLean’s OCD Institute . Tomorrow morning I will move my son into his new dorm room. Already today he and I have packed the car, driven 550 miles, eaten at two restaurants, used a number of public restrooms, chatted, laughed, and listened to countless...

Actor Experiences Success Despite Years of Anguish

Hollywood loves a good medical drama, but for Ethan S. Smith, a successful actor, writer and director, the anguish he experienced due to obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) was all too real. Although Smith now successfully manages his OCD, it was just a few years ago that he was in the depths of...

In a Patient’s Words: In My Own Head

“Okay, Lisa. Go.” That’s Carol Hevia, a behavioral therapist at the OCDI, talking to me in my head, as if I was sitting in her Intrusive Thoughts group. Once again, she’s telling me it’s time to spill my guts. When I was a resident at the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Institute (OCDI) one year ago...

Patchwork: One OCD Patient’s Story

Rachel is a former patient at the OCD Institute. I’m obsessed with “The Real Housewives” and “The Rachel Zoe Project.” And I love to sew. I’ll sit down on a Saturday morning, coffee in hand, and watch a few episodes in a row, sewing by hand or speeding fabric through my machine. Either of these...