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Roz SHAFRAN gave the first Award for Outstanding Doctoral Research Contributions to Psychology Lecture at the Society's Annual Conference in Belfast in April.
OBSESSIVE compulsive disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder that is estimated to affect 1-3 per cent of the population, although the true prevalence remains unknown (Antony et al., 1998). Most people with OCD have both obsessions and compulsions. The obsessions are recurrent, unwanted intrusive thoughts, ideas, images or impulses. The individuals who experience the obsessions are horrified by them, and usually find their content to be morally repugnant and intensely distressing.
Most of these obsessions can be classified as having sexual, blasphemous or aggressive themes. The person resists the obsessions by attempting to ignore or suppress them, or to 'neutralise' them with some other thought or action. They are not simply worries, they are out of keeping with the person's character and they are resisted. The obsessions interfere with normal functioning, and the person knows that they are a product of his or her own mind.
For example, it is not uncommon in OCD for deeply religious people to have repeated blasphemous thoughts such as 'God doesn't exist', or for caring parents to have thoughts of harming their children, One devoted, loving mother regularly had the frightening image of throwing her baby down the stairs, and a recurrent fear that she might have unknowingly sexually abused the infant.
In the majority of clinical samples, obsessions are accompanied by compulsions. Compulsive behaviour takes the form of repetitive physical or mental acts that people feel driven to perform, either in response to the obsession or according to certain rules. They recognise these acts as unreasonable or excessive, but they see them as purposeful.
The function of the compulsion is to prevent a dreaded event and to reduce their distress. But either it is not connected in a realistic way with the event or it is excessive. Many people find the need to perform compulsive behaviour to be distressing in itself. They will often be frustrated by the time that it takes to complete the compulsion 'correctly' and the interference caused to normal social and work functioning.
The most common examples of compulsive behaviour are checking and washing. For instance, a man with OCD...