Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Definition
By Mayo Clinic staffObsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a type of anxiety disorder in which you have unreasonable thoughts and fears (obsessions) that lead you to engage in repetitive behaviors (compulsions). With obsessive-compulsive disorder, you may realize that your obsessions aren't reasonable, and you may try to ignore them or stop them. But that only increases your distress and anxiety. Ultimately, you feel driven to perform compulsive acts in an effort to ease your distress.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder often centers around themes, such as a fear of getting contaminated by germs. To ease your contamination fears, you may compulsively wash your hands until they're sore and chapped. Despite your efforts, the distressing thoughts of obsessive-compulsive disorder keep coming back. This leads to more ritualistic behavior — and a vicious cycle that's characteristic of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
- Ciechanowski P, et al. Overview of obsessive-compulsive disorder. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Oct. 1, 2008.
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder. In: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV-TR. 4th ed. Arlington, Va.: American Psychiatric Association; 2000. http://www.psychiatryonline.com. Accessed
- Anxiety disorders. National Institute of Mental Health. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/anxiety.cfm#anx3. Accessed Nov. 11, 2008.
- Hales RE, et al, eds. Obsessive-compulsive disorder. In: The American Psychiatric PublishingTextbook of Psychiatry. 5th ed. Arlington, Va.: American Psychiatric Publishing Inc.; 2008. http://psychiatryonline.com/resourceToc.aspx?resourceID=5. Accessed Oct. 17, 2008.
- Practice guideline for the treatment of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Arlington, Va.: American Psychiatric Association. http//www.psych.org. Accessed Oct. 31, 2008.
- Simpson H, et al. A randomized, controlled trial of cognitive-behavioral therapy for augmenting pharmacotherapy in obsessive-compulsive disorder. American Journal of Psychiatry. 2008;165:621.
- Hall-Flavin DK. (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. Dec. 1, 2008.
- Anderson CF. (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. Dec. 3, 2008.
