OCD and Hoarding Disorders

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Of the many identified and treated mental disorders that exist in the fields of psychology and psychiatry, the author of this report has decided to focus on obsessive compulsive disorder. The author will be giving a review and summary of that selected case and disorder. The facets of the disorder that will be described include the biological, psychological and social factors involved in the selected case. It will also describe the rationale for selecting any given intervention, what would be done, who would be involved, the setting in which the intervention would occur and what area the intervention is targeting. By "area," the author is referring to the aforementioned biological, psychological and social factors that tend to be involved. While obsessive compulsive disorder can be a debilitating mental disorder, there are most definitely defined and established intervention methods available that can and should be used.

Analysis

As described by Gellatly and Molloy (2014), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a fairly common mental health problem that is commonly associated with poor quality of life, impair functioning and increase overall risk of suicide. The very nasty about obsessive compulsive disorder is that the possibility of improvement is unlikely to impossible so long as a proper treatment intervention is not applied to the patient. Unless or until that happens, the biological and psychological issues at play will tend to completely run roughshod over any social factors such as experiences with family members and friends as it relates to the patient being in need of help. For example, even if the patient is embarrassed due to others knowing about the illness, that will just make things worse because now embarrassment is lobbed on top of a disorder that the patient really has no control over (Gellatly & Molloy, 2014).

However, treatment can be very effective once it is started. A common way in which OCD is dealt with is through pharmacological interventions as well as the use of cognitive behavioral therapy. The cognitive behavioral therapy will generally start off as more basic and high-level at first to see if there is a response to those methods. If there is not an acceptable level of response to that treatment, then more advance methods are used. Quite often, nurses and other healthcare professionals may be enlisted and trained to guide the treatment and assistance of the patient as they move through their interventions. Commonly, the setting for an intervention would be in a clinical setting. Quite often, it would be in the closed off office of a psychologist or mental health professional. However, it can also occur in real-world settings. The latter can be useful because responding to treatment in a controlled setting is a much different beast than doing so when in a regular and real-world environment. Regardless, the treatment is most definitely treating the biological and psychological factors that are causing the mental health disorder to be magnified and omnipresent for the patient. A reduction and management of those factors would lead to improvement in the social sphere as the patient becomes more in line with regular everyday social situations rather than being a clear outlier due to compulsive and repetitive behaviors such as handwashing and hand sanitizing (Gellatly & Molloy, 2014).

It should be noted that while handwashing and "checking on" certain things repeatedly (e.g. If the oven is on) are a fairly common manifestation of obsessive compulsive disorder, there are indeed other ones. A fairly common one that is associated strongly with obsessive compulsive disorder is that of hoarding. When it comes to hoarding, the type and manifestation of the intervention matters a great deal as there is more than one way to proceed and one method will obviously be better than the other. However, which method is best will depend on the level of the psychological problem, the history of the patient and what is truly driving their behavior. Just as with standard cases of obsessive compulsive disorder, the level and advancement of the intervention should be as little as is necessary to be therapeutic and effective but there will be cases where the intervention will need to be very involved and aggressive. Being more aggressive is often necessary with hoarders as their activity is quite literally a danger to their health and well-being. If their house is overrun with garbage and/or the house's basic facilities such as running water, toilet and shower are not functioning, then that is a major problem. Even worse is if there are vermin infestations such as rats or mice and/or there are children present in the home. The latter, even if there is a mental health issue involved, is a clear-cut case of neglect and endangerment of the child (Breininger, 2014).

When it comes to intervening with a hoarder, the social factors are much more involved and present when it comes to picking an intervention. Examples of questions that would have to be asked would include whether there are financial pains involved, whether the person's health or life is in jeopardy, whether an involved child's education is suffering as a result of the hoarding, whether there are relationship issues such as a pending divorce involved, whether the client is on the verge of getting fired from their job as a result of the hoarding and whether there is a hint of self-loathing in the patient that could turn into a possibility of suicide. Other criteria that have to be taken seriously are whether there are time constraints due to things like evictions or child protective services deadlines, whether there is a public health hazard involved and whether there are limited alternatives in play. Regardless of the intervention decided on, there has to be a modicum of trust between the patient and provider. If that is missing, an intervention likely will not work (Breininger, 2014; Nedelisky & Steele, 2009).