OCD Treatment in Noida
What is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)?
OCD is a chronic psychiatric illness and is characterized by repeated unwanted thoughts and mental images which the suffering person is unable to resist, and these cause significant distress to the person. The patient performs activities like counting, checking, or cleaning in response to those thoughts to temporarily decrease the distress. But the thoughts or images reappear and continue to affect him. It can be heritable across generations in the families.
What are the symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?
This disorder starts gradually as the person gets repeated and unwanted thoughts or mental images like getting bad thoughts on God or dirty. These are intruded into his/her mind against their will significantly affect their daily living. Gradually they increase in duration, and the person feels unable to resist them and perform activities like counting, checking, or excess washing to temporarily decrease the distress, but these thoughts reappear and continue to consume his productive time of the day. Patients maintain secrecy about their symptoms, and their family also initially helps or takes part in their repeated actions leading to a delay in treatment-seeking and inadequate response to treatment. Early treatment-seeking leads to significant recovery.
How common is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?
It is a common psychiatric illness affecting 1 to 3 in 100 persons.
Who gets affected more by OCD?
In adults, it is seen as equally common in males and females.
Is OCD seen in children?
It can be seen in 1 in 1000 children (<12 years) and 8 in 1000 adolescents (13-19 years). In adolescents, it commonly affects males two times more compared to females. Childhood obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a chronic neuropsychiatric condition and has more genetically inherited compared to adult OCD.
What is the treatment for OCD?
Outpatient treatment is usually sufficient for most OCD patients. . Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), especially exposure and response prevention (ERP), is the evidence-based psychological intervention for the treatment of OCD. Typical CBT package is delivered over 2–3 months of 2–3 sessions a week for around 15–20 sessions. Medication includes the use of antidepressants at higher doses compared to that used in depression. Response to treatment is slow to start and takes weeks to months, sometimes years, for an adequate decrease in symptoms. So a lot of patience and continuous use of medication or CBT sessions is needed. In rare cases that don’t respond to these treatment methods, low-dose antipsychotics may be prescribed.