Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a mental illness widely recognized by mental health experts around the world. It is an anxiety disorder that is characterized by a range of symptoms that can include powerful, unwanted, or recurrent thoughts and/or compulsive, repetitive behaviors. Anxiety and depression among people with OCD are common.
The disorder itself is very common, affecting more than 4 million people in the United States alone. The precise cause of OCD is unknown, but it is a treatable disorder, with a number of treatment modalities available, including medications as well as cognitive-behavioral therapy.
How is OCD Diagnosed?
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder does not have any biomarkers. A biomarker is a marker that doctors can see on a medical test that can indicate the presence of an illness or a disease. For example, high levels of a certain protein or antibody in the blood can be biomarkers for certain illnesses. At the same time, a fracture appearing in an X-ray can be a biomarker indicating a broken bone.
Mental illnesses like OCD do not tend to have biomarkers, so diagnosing them is particularly difficult for even the most well-trained mental health professionals.
In all medicine, diagnosis is often a question of ruling out all other possibilities so that there is only one remaining diagnosis.
Sometimes mental health professionals will administer a self-test to patients who they suspect might be suffering from OCD. But even if this self-test suggests a diagnosis of OCD, therapists will still conduct a mental health examination. In diagnosing OCD, therapists may look to see if the patient has obsessions and/or compulsive behaviors, but these indicators are not enough.
They want to know to what extent the obsessions and compulsions occupy the patient's time and whether they get in the way of the person's ordinary life. Since these symptoms also mirror other mental health problems, further examination is required, including family history. Additionally, therapists may recommend some medical tests be carried out to make sure the problem doesn't have a medical explanation.
When everything else has been ruled out, and assuming it's relevant, a health professional will make a diagnosis of OCD.