college essays on ocd

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Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Cecelia scheeler's college essay.

I can open doors with my feet.

I developed this ability at the tender age of four after I was diagnosed with severe obsessive compulsive disorder. Since my diagnosis, my life has been a series of fluctuating dosage levels, revolving door compulsions, and mad dashes for the bathroom sink.

OCD takes many different forms, but few of them are what you see on Monk . Sure, many of us obsessive-compulsives have had the urge to take a bath in germicide or organize our wardrobe by color at one point or another, but obsessions can be about anything at all. Despite what the media may lead you to believe, OCD is not simply about cleanliness and organization. Simple routines like brushing one’s hair can become a two hour process. But over the past few years, I have realized that my disorder doesn'’t need to be an obstacle in my path to success.

That’s not to say that it hasn’t been a rough ride. After my initial diagnosis, I was prescribed medication and had few symptoms throughout elementary school. Occasionally, I would relapse, and then I would start flicking light switches on and off and on and off and on and off and on and off at a seizure-inducing pace. But eventually, the lights would stay off, and I’d walk away.

Then came middle school.

I don’t think anyone enjoys middle school. Most people have horror stories to tell about the time they were hit up for their lunch money or given a swirly in the toilet or some other such misery. But I can say with a certain amount of confidence that my middle school experience was probably worse than most.

I entered sixth grade at the age of ten, just as puberty set in at full force, changing my body chemistry in a way that caused my medication to stop working entirely. This was unfortunate, as middle school kids tolerate weirdness about as well as Glenn Beck “tolerates” Obama. I was given a number of nasty nicknames and I quickly carved out a comfy little niche for myself at the low end of the popularity scale. At the high end was Heaven (no, really, that was her name), a girl with white-blond hair and an orange, spray-on tan. At the opposite end was me, the girl who would, on occasion, make weird noises at the back of her throat and shake her head like a wet dog.

High school has been a vast improvement. My peers at Carver Center for Arts and Technology are understanding and supportive. My dosage levels are stable. I no longer possess some of the more noticeable tics (such as the “wet dog shake”), though I have since gained a particularly consistent tic that involves typing certain words multiple multiple multiple multiple multiple multiple multiple times. That’s the thing about OCD. It’s always there. Whenever you get rid of one obsession, a shiny new one takes its place. It’s like Netflix, except it’s not as cool.

In the summer before my senior year, I resolved to step outside my narrow comfort zone, and so I attended a Japanese language immersion camp in rural Minnesota for two weeks. During that time, I shared a bathroom with sixty other girls, took five-minute showers, slept in a bug infested cabin, and managed not to have a total OCD meltdown. From this experience, I realized that my OCD can’t dictate what I am capable of doing. I proved to myself that I’m perfectly able to have new experiences that will push me beyond my boundaries – I now feel confident that I can succeed in the new and unfamiliar environment of college.

These days, I’ve been opening doors with the appropriate appendage.

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100 OCD Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Inside This Article

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a mental health condition characterized by intrusive thoughts and repetitive behaviors. People with OCD often struggle with unwanted thoughts or obsessions that cause anxiety, leading them to engage in rituals or compulsions to alleviate their distress. If you are studying psychology or mental health, writing an essay on OCD can be a fascinating and informative topic. To help you get started, here are 100 OCD essay topic ideas and examples:

• The history and evolution of OCD as a recognized mental health disorder.
• Common obsessions and compulsions associated with OCD.
• The prevalence of OCD in different demographic groups.
• The role of genetics in the development of OCD.
• How OCD is diagnosed and treated in clinical settings.
• The relationship between OCD and other mental health disorders, such as anxiety and depression.
• The impact of OCD on daily functioning and quality of life.
• Cognitive-behavioral therapy as a treatment for OCD.
• The use of medication in managing OCD symptoms.
• The stigma and misconceptions surrounding OCD.
• The neurobiological basis of OCD.
• The effects of childhood trauma on the development of OCD.
• The link between OCD and perfectionism.
• The role of family dynamics in the maintenance of OCD symptoms.
• The impact of OCD on relationships and social interactions.
• The effectiveness of exposure therapy in treating OCD.
• The relationship between OCD and hoarding disorder.
• The cultural differences in the presentation and treatment of OCD.
• The impact of OCD on academic and occupational performance.
• The use of mindfulness techniques in managing OCD symptoms.
• The role of stress in triggering OCD symptoms.
• The challenges of living with OCD in a society that values productivity and efficiency.
• The role of self-care in managing OCD symptoms.
• The link between OCD and body dysmorphic disorder.
• The comorbidity of OCD with substance use disorders.
• The impact of media portrayals of OCD on public perceptions.
• The relationship between OCD and eating disorders.
• The effectiveness of virtual reality therapy in treating OCD.
• The role of peer support groups in managing OCD symptoms.
• The impact of trauma-focused therapy on OCD symptoms.
• The relationship between OCD and intrusive thoughts.
• The use of relaxation techniques in managing OCD symptoms.
• The impact of OCD on financial well-being.
• The effectiveness of teletherapy in treating OCD.
• The link between OCD and trichotillomania (hair-pulling disorder).
• The role of exercise in managing OCD symptoms.
• The relationship between OCD and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
• The impact of sleep disturbances on OCD symptoms.
• The use of art therapy in managing OCD symptoms.
• The effectiveness of group therapy in treating OCD.
• The relationship between OCD and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
• The impact of stigma on help-seeking behaviors among individuals with OCD.
• The role of peer support groups in reducing feelings of isolation among individuals with OCD.
• The relationship between OCD and substance use disorders.
• The impact of OCD on romantic relationships.
• The use of cognitive restructuring in managing OCD symptoms.
• The relationship between OCD and social anxiety disorder.
• The role of mindfulness-based stress reduction in treating OCD.
• The impact of OCD on academic performance.
• The effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy in managing OCD symptoms.
• The relationship between OCD and body-focused repetitive behaviors (e.g., skin picking).
• The impact of stigma on treatment adherence among individuals with OCD.
• The role of animal-assisted therapy in managing OCD symptoms.
• The relationship between OCD and impulse control disorders.
• The impact of OCD on family dynamics.
• The use of biofeedback in managing OCD symptoms.
• The relationship between OCD and sleep disorders.
• The impact of OCD on self-esteem.
• The role of occupational therapy in managing OCD symptoms.
• The relationship between OCD and personality disorders.
• The impact of OCD on parenting.
• The use of exposure and response prevention therapy in treating OCD.
• The relationship between OCD and emotional dysregulation.
• The impact of OCD on physical health.
• The role of dialectical behavior therapy in managing OCD symptoms.
• The relationship between OCD and schizophrenia spectrum disorders.
• The impact of OCD on social functioning.
• The use of technology in managing OCD symptoms (e.g., apps, online therapy).
• The relationship between OCD and trauma-related disorders.
• The impact of OCD on cognitive functioning.
• The role of spirituality in managing OCD symptoms.
• The relationship between OCD and attachment disorders.
• The impact of OCD on body image.
• The use of exposure therapy in managing OCD symptoms in children.
• The relationship between OCD and neurodevelopmental disorders.
• The role of family therapy in managing OCD symptoms.

In conclusion, writing an essay on OCD can be a rewarding experience, allowing you to explore the complexities of this mental health condition and its impact on individuals' lives. With these 100 essay topic ideas and examples, you can delve into various aspects of OCD and contribute to the understanding and awareness of this disorder. Good luck with your essay writing!

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OCD is so much more than handwashing or tidying. As a historian with the disorder, here’s what I’ve learned

PhD Candidate in History, University of Sheffield

Disclosure statement

Eva Surawy Stepney receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) via the White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities (WRoCAH).

University of Sheffield provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK.

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Readers are advised that this article contains explicit discussion of suicide and suicidal and obsessional thoughts. If you are in need of support, contact details are included at the end of the article.

At the age of 12, “out of nowhere”, Matt says he started having repetitive thoughts concerning whether he wanted to end his life. Every time he saw a knife, he would ask himself: “Am I going to stab myself?” Or, when he was near a ledge: “Am I going to jump?”

Matt had heard a lot about teenage depression, and thought this must be what was going on. But it was confusing, he says: “I didn’t feel suicidal, I really enjoyed my life. I just had an intense fear of doing something to hurt myself.”

Shortly afterwards, pre-empted by hearing about a notorious banned film, Matt began questioning whether he, like the central character, might be a serial killer. These thoughts “kept coming and coming” and he would lie in bed running over scenarios, trying to work out whether he was “going crazy”:

I really needed help. I didn’t know who to talk to. But it wasn’t on my radar to think about this as OCD.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a significant mental health diagnosis in the 21st century. The World Health Organization (WHO) lists it as one of the ten most disabling illnesses in terms of loss of earning and reduced quality of life, and OCD is frequently cited as the fourth most common mental disorder globally after depression, substance abuse and social phobia (anxiety about social interactions).

Yet everything Matt knew about OCD, he tells me, came from daytime talkshows where “people were washing their hands 1,000 times a day – it was all about external and really extreme behaviours”. And that didn’t feel like what he was going through.

Across the world, we’re seeing unprecedented levels of mental illness at all ages, from children to the very old – with huge costs to families, communities and economies. In this series , we investigate what’s causing this crisis, and report on the latest research to improve people’s mental health at all stages of life.

A similar experience is recounted in the 2011 book Taking Control of OCD by John (not his real name) who, after a colleague had taken their own life, became “inundated with thoughts” about what he might do to himself. Every time he crossed the road, John thought: “What would happen if I stopped moving and was run over by a bus?” He also had thoughts of murdering those he loved. John recalled:

Try as I might, I just couldn’t chase the thoughts out of my head … When I tried to explain what was going on to my girlfriend, I couldn’t find a way of articulating what was happening to me … At the time, I thought OCD was all about triple-checking you had locked the front door and that your drawers were tidy.

Despite the prevalence of OCD in contemporary society, the experiences of Matt and John reflect two important features of this disorder. First, that the stereotype of OCD is one of washing and checking behaviours – the compulsions aspect, defined clinically as “repetitive behaviours that a person feels driven to perform”. And that obsessions – defined as “ unwanted, unpleasant thoughts ” often of a harmful, sexual or blasphemous nature – are viewed as obscure, confusing and unrecognisable as OCD.

People who experience obsessional thoughts are therefore frequently unable to identify their symptoms as OCD – and neither , very often, are the experts they see in clinical settings. Due to mischaracterisations of the disorder, OCD sufferers with non-typical, less visible presentations usually go undiagnosed for ten or more years .

When John visited his GP, he was diagnosed with depression. He recalled that the GP concentrated more on the visible effects of his distress - a lack of appetite and disrupted sleeping patterns. The thoughts remained invisible. As he put it:

I don’t know how you’re supposed to tell someone you don’t know that you have thoughts about killing people you love.

Even for those with “textbook” OCD such as my friend Abby, “the compulsion is just the tip of the iceberg”. Abby was able to self-diagnose at the age of 12, when she experienced handwashing and locking door compulsions. She says people still think of her as “Abby [who] likes to wash her hands a lot”.

Now, she tells me, “I realise that I have no interest in washing my hands – I’m a pretty messy person, and I don’t mind other people being messy.” Rather than a love of cleaning, her acts were related to the altogether scarier obsessional thought: “What if I am going to hurt other people?”

Clinical guidelines, such as those provided in the UK by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence , define OCD as being characterised by both compulsions and obsessions. So, why do the difficulties encountered by Matt, John and Abby – of recognising the internal thoughts that dominate their lives – appear to be so common ?

My experience of OCD

From the age of 16, I have also suffered with thoughts that I later came to associate with OCD, but which began as invisible and tormenting. An article I wrote in 2014, entitled The Unseen Obsession , described my experience of having left university midway through my studies due to a single thought that gathered “such power that I even ended up attacking my body in an attempt to eliminate its force”. I wrote:

I have suffered with obsessional thoughts for the last four years, and can safely say that [OCD] is far from being about clean hands.

My obsessions have taken many forms since my teenage years. They began with me wondering whether things really existed, whether my parents were really who they said they were, and whether I wanted to harm – and was a risk to – my family, friends, even my dog.

Many of us know what it is like to ruminate about a person, a conflict, or something else we feel anxious about. But for those with obsessional thoughts (diagnosed or otherwise), this is quite different to simply “overthinking”. As I attempted to explain in my article:

Conversations falter as the thought leaps through your mind. Other topics seem less important, and time to yourself provides space to assess, analyse, and look for evidence of the thought being ‘true’ … [Obsessing] is like fighting: you push and shove your thoughts away and they come back with twice as much force. You spend time trying to avoid them and they pop up everywhere, taunting and mocking your failed attempt at running away.

It took me six months of weekly therapy sessions before I felt able to voice my obsessional thought to my therapist – someone I had known for a number of years. My unwillingness to be open about it was not only tied up with feelings of shame about its taboo content, but also my inability to see such thinking as part of a recognised disorder.

The question of what constitutes OCD, why we understand – and misunderstand – it as we do, as well as my own experience of living with it, led me to study how OCD became recognised and categorised as a mental health disorder .

In particular, my research shows that there are important insights to be gained from the research decisions made by a group of influential clinical psychologists in south London in the early 1970s – shedding light on why so many people, myself included, still struggle to recognise and make sense of our obsessional thoughts.

The origin of the concepts

Categories of mental illness are not stable across time. As medical, scientific, and public knowledge about an illness changes, so does how it is experienced and diagnosed.

Prior to the 1970s, “obsessions” and “compulsions” did not exist in a unified category – rather, they appeared in an array of psychiatric classifications. At the start of the 20th century, for example, British doctor James Shaw defined verbal obsessions as “a mode of cerebral activity in which a thought – mostly obscene or blasphemous – forces itself into consciousness”.

Such cerebral activity could, according to Shaw, arise in hysteria, neurasthenia , or as a precursor to delusions. One of his patients – a woman who experienced “irresistible, obscene, blasphemous and unutterable thoughts” – was diagnosed with obsessional melancholia, a “form of insanity”.

The symptom arose from what Shaw defined as “nervous weakness”, an explanation that reflected the broader 19th-century view that obsessional thoughts were indicative of a fragile nervous system – either inherited, or weakened through overwork, alcohol or promiscuous behaviour (described as “ degeneration theory ”). Notably, Shaw did not mention any form of repetitive behaviour in relation to these verbal obsessions.

At a similar time to Shaw’s writings, Sigmund Freud, the Austrian founder of psychoanalysis, developed his psychoanalytic category of “ Zwangsneurose – translated in Britain as "obsessional neurosis” and in the US as “compulsion neurosis”. In Freud’s writings , the “Zwang” referred to persistent ideas that emerged from a repressed conflict between unresolved childhood impulses (those of love and hate) and the critical self (ego).

Freud’s most famous case study , published in 1909, featured the “Rat Man”, a former Austrian army officer who possessed a variety of elaborate symptoms. In the first instance, he had become obsessed that he would fall victim to a horrific rat-based punishment that had been recounted to him by a colleague. The patient also expressed that if he had certain desires such as a wish to see a woman naked, his already-deceased father “will be bound to die”.

The Rat Man was described by Freud as engaging in a “system of ceremonial defences” and “elaborate manoeuvres full of contradictions” that have been read by some as the behavioural aspects of what would become OCD. However, there are crucial differences between the “defences” of Freud’s client and the compulsions of OCD, including that the former largely involved thinking rather than acting, and were by no means consistent or stereotyped.

This article is part of Conversation Insights The Insights team generates long-form journalism derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.

The psychoanalytic category of “obsessional neurosis” was adopted and modified in Britain during the first world war, and became a staple – but inconsistently defined – diagnosis in British psychiatric textbooks of the inter-war period. Up to the 1950s, the terms “obsession” and “compulsion” were being used interchangeably in psychiatric writing. The complexity surrounding their meaning is demonstrated in the writings of Aubrey Lewis , a leading figure in post-war British psychiatry, who referred to “obsessional illnesses” as being made up of “compulsive thoughts” and “compulsive inner speech”.

Like Freud, Lewis mentioned the “complex rituals” of the obsessional – such as the patient “who is perpetually putting himself in the greatest trouble to ensure that he never steps on a worm inadvertently”. But he cautioned against “the dangers of associating any kind of repetitious activity with obsessionality”, writing that “it certainly cannot be judged on behaviourist grounds”.

Defining OCD by visible behaviour

OCD began to emerge in the form we recognise it today from the early 1970s – and was established as a formal psychiatric disorder through its inclusion in the third and fourth editions of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (commonly known as DSM-III and DSM-IV) in 1980 and 1994.

The centrality of visible and measurable behaviours in the categorisation of OCD – particularly washing and checking – can be traced back to a series of experiments conducted by clinical psychologists in the early 1970s at the Institute of Psychiatry and the Maudsley Hospital in south London.

Under the direction of South African psychologist Stanley Rachman, the complex array of symptoms contained in the categories of obsessional illness and obsessional neurosis were divided into two: “visible” compulsive rituals, and “invisible” obsessional ruminations. While Rachman and his colleagues conducted a large research programme on compulsive behaviours, obsessions were relegated to the backburner.

For example, in their investigation of ten psychiatric inpatients diagnosed with obsessional neurosis, “compulsions had to be present for entry into the trial and patients complaining of ruminations were excluded” – a statement reiterated throughout subsequent experiments.

Indeed, this study did not merely require patients to exhibit some form of visible compulsion. The ten patients included were exclusively those with “visible handwashing” behaviour, which was viewed as the “easiest” symptom to experiment on. Likewise, the second round of studies only included patients who engaged in visible “checking” behaviour, such as whether a door was unlocked.

In a 1971 paper , Rachman offered his rationale for taking this approach, explaining how “obsessional ruminators raise special problems for the clinical psychologist because of their subjective, private nature”. This, he argued, was in contrast with “the other main feature of obsessional neurosis, compulsive behaviour, which can be approached with greater ease. It is visible, has a predictable quality, and many reproducible analogies in animal research”.

Rachman viewed compulsions as “visible” and “predictable” in large part due to the way clinical psychology had developed as a new profession in Britain, at the Maudsley Hospital in particular, in the decades following the second world war. To differentiate their practice from the existing mental health professions of psychiatry (medically trained doctors specialising in mental health) and psychoanalysis (talking therapy derived from Freud), these early clinical psychologists presented themselves as “ applied scientists ” who brought scientific methods from the laboratory to a clinical setting. Their conception of science was rooted in empiricism – with an emphasis on visibility, measurability and experimentation.

As part of this commitment to empirical science, these clinical psychologists adopted a model of anxiety derived from 20th-century behaviourism. This focus on observable behaviour was viewed as having much greater scientific value than psychoanalysis, which dealt with the “ unverifiable ” and “unscientific” realm of thoughts and thinking.

So, when obsessional ruminations gained a renewed focus in the mid-1970s, it was through this lens of visible compulsive behaviours. Rachman and his colleagues started talking about “mental compulsions” (such as saying a good thought after a bad thought) as “equivalent to handwashing”- rather than focusing on the importance and content of these thoughts in their own right.

In the early 1980s, clinical psychology came under pressure from cognitive psychologists (those concerned with thinking and language) for its reductive focus on behaviour. But despite this move to include cognitive approaches , the centrality of visible behavioural compulsions has continued to characterise perceptions of OCD in cultural and clinical domains.

This is perhaps most evident in media portrayals of the disorder – a critique taken up by cultural scholars such as Dana Fennell , who look at representations of OCD in TV and film.

The archetypal portrayal of OCD has not been helped by the recent publicity given to David Beckham and his extensive tidying . When I ask Abby what she thought about the attention that Beckham’s OCD was receiving in the media, she replies: “It’s so boring. It’s the same presentation that always gets thought of as OCD.”

Limitations to the ‘gold standard’ treatment

This archetypal portrayal of OCD also relates to how it is treated. The “gold standard” treatment in the UK today is the behavioural technique of exposure and ritual prevention (ERP), either on its own or combined with cognitive therapy. ERP gained acceptance from the experiments of Rachman and colleagues in the early 1970s, when they were exclusively working with patients with observable behaviours.

One of their key studies involved patients from the Maudsley Hospital who repeatedly washed their hands. They were told to touch smears of dog excrement and put hamsters in their bags and in their hair, while being prevented from washing for increased lengths of time.

Such experiments were again governed by observability and measurability. The “success” of ERP treatment – and its perceived superiority over psychiatric and psychoanalytic methods – was demonstrated by a reduction in the patients’ visible handwashing behaviour.

Today, if you are diagnosed with OCD by a psychiatrist and given OCD-specialist treatment via the NHS, you will most likely be told to undergo the same kind of ERP procedure that hospital inpatients were experimentally given in the 1970s: touching a set of items that you fear (exposure) while being prevented from engaging in your usual compulsive behaviour.

An identical method is also used when it comes to obsessional thoughts. Patients are asked to identify their worrying obsession, then either expose themselves to provoking situations or repeat the thought in their mind without engaging in “mental compulsions” – such as counting, replacing a bad thought with a good thought, or trying to “solve” the content of the obsessional thought.

It’s certainly true that this form of behavioural therapy can be hugely helpful in the treatment of OCD symptoms. Abby, after undergoing ERP for 14 years, said she had “developed a lot of practices around not giving into my [washing and checking] compulsions”.

I also found the approach beneficial in reducing the threatening quality of my obsessional thoughts. Repeating “I want to hurt my family” or “I don’t really exist” to myself over and over again, without actually trying to solve these issues, reduced the time I spent ruminating.

However, while being a huge advocate of ERP, Abby also observed that “sometimes when I get rid of a compulsion, it doesn’t mean I just get rid of the obsession.” While the “outward compulsions” disappear, “it doesn’t mean my mind stops cycling and mental questioning”.

Some contemporary clinicians have referred to ERP, designed around visible symptom reduction, as a “ whack-a-mole technique ” – you get rid one symptom (obsession or compulsion) and another pops up.

ERP is frequently accompanied with cognitive therapy techniques, such as cognitive restructuring (identifying beliefs and providing evidence for and against them), or being told that obsessions are “just thoughts”, that they are meaningless, and that you do not want to enact them.

Despite the success of cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT) and ERP in scientific trials, a major review of evidence in 2021 questioned whether the effects of the approach in treating OCD had been overstated – reflecting the high proportion of OCD cases that are designated as “ treatment resistant ”.

I also believe there are some crucial limitations to contemporary treatments for OCD. Exposure (ERP) techniques stem from a period in which thoughts were not being considered at all by clinical psychologists, while CBT designates the content of obsessional thoughts as unimportant. Matt, like me, has found that CBT “can only take you so far”, explaining:

Part of this was that [CBT therapists] are so committed to the idea that thoughts don’t have meaning … [They] treat your symptom and once those are gone, you should get on with your life. I didn’t find that there was a way of thinking about [my] ruminations in the context of my whole life.

Experiences of alternative treatments

So much of my understanding about OCD has changed since I first wrote about it for Rethink Mental Illness almost a decade ago. Thinking about the historical development and categorisation of OCD has, it turns out, given me a greater sense of ease regarding this widely misunderstood condition. I feel less bound by our current conceptual frameworks, and more able to reflect on what I think is helpful in terms of how to successfully manage my obsessional thoughts.

For example, despite being warned away from psychoanalysis from a young age (my mum is a clinical psychologist, and psychologists are often fervently anti-psychoanalytic!), I have found psychoanalysis incredibly helpful in becoming comfortable with my thoughts.

This is because CBT typically focuses on present symptoms without looking into their meaning or how they relate to your personal history, and this comes into tension with my desire, as a historian, to think about the past. In contrast, psychoanalysis locates obsessional thoughts in history – pointing to childhood as a crucial point of psychic development. I have been able to understand my obsessions as the result of a deep childhood fear concerning the death of my loved ones, from which I developed a rigid desire for control.

As a young teenager trying to determine what was going on with him, Matt went to the public library and took out a Freud reader . He describes this as “the worst possible thing for a 14-year-old to read”, as it made him believe “that I did really have all these [murderous suicidal] impulses and all my fears are true”.

Despite this experience, while training to become a social worker, he “got into psychoanalysis as an alternate way to think about therapy and think about my own experience”. For him, psychoanalysis revealed the opposite to the image of “OCD as handwashing”.

Instead, he says, it focused on the aspects of “obsessionality that are internal”, showing him that the “mind is so powerful that it can produce a lot of imaginary fears”. It also allowed him to see “OCD symptoms as wrapped up with my whole life”.

Particularly profound in psychoanalytic thought is the acceptance of the complexity and unknowability at the heart of human experience. As Jaqueline Rose, professor of humanities at Birkbeck, University of London, wrote: :

Psychoanalysis begins with a mind in flight, a mind that cannot take the measure of its own pain. It begins, that is, with the recognition that the world – or what Freud sometimes refers to as ‘civilisation’ – makes demands on human subjects that are too much to bear.

This idea of “a mind in flight” has helped me think about my obsessions – whether my parents are really who they say they are; am I going to hurt those I love? – as part of a battle for certainty and control that is both unattainable and understandable, considering the world we live in.

The aim of psychoanalytic treatment is not to eradicate symptoms but to bring to light the difficult knots that humans have to deal with. Matt refers to psychoanalysis as acknowledging “a sort of messiness of the mind … I’ve found the psychoanalytic view of accepting your own messiness extremely helpful”. Rose similarly describes psychoanalysis as “the opposite of housework in how it deals with the mess we make”.

In the UK, psychoanalysis has been rejected within NHS service provision. And I believe this is, at least in part, a result of historical critiques levelled at it by clinical psychologists as they developed behaviour therapies to treat OCD in the late 20th century.

‘A lot of emotion and sadness’

While compulsive behaviour such as handwashing and checking is widely perceived as “representative” of OCD, the tormenting experience of having obsessional thoughts is still rarely acknowledged and discussed. The shame and confusion attached to such thoughts, coupled with the feeling of being misunderstood, make this an important issue to address, particularly when misdiagnosis of OCD is so high.

My PhD on the history of OCD has also showed me the ways in which psychological research shapes how we conceive of diagnostic categories – and consequently, ourselves. While psychology’s commitment to objectivity, empiricism and visibility has provided tools that are tremendously useful in the clinic, my research sheds lights on how the often-exclusive focus on visible symptoms has at times trumped the appreciation of the complex experience of having obsessional thoughts.

I first met Matt in 2019 at the first OCD in Society conference, held at Queen Mary University of London, where he was giving a presentation on the “multiple meanings of OCD”. We discussed our own experiences of the disorder, and what we thought that history, psychoanalysis and anthropology could contribute to understandings of OCD.

Matt was 34, and he told me this was the first time he “had ever voiced the internal stuff out loud, and heard other people talk about it”. Recalling how this made him feel, he continued:

I felt a lot of emotion and sadness. The isolation had been such a big part of my life that I had stopped noticing it. Then being out of the isolation was such a relief, it made me realise how bad it had been.

If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts and need support, you can call your GP, NHS 111 , or free helplines including Samaritans (116 123), Calm (0800 585858) or Papyrus (0800 068 4141).

In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here .

For you: more from our Insights series :

How to solve our mental health crisis

How music heals us, even when it’s sad – by a neuroscientist leading a new study of musical therapy

Unlocking new clues to how dementia and Alzheimer’s work in the brain – Uncharted Brain podcast series

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97 OCD Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best ocd topic ideas & essay examples, 🥇 most interesting ocd topics to write about, 📌 simple & easy ocd essay titles, ❓ ocd research questions.

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• OCD: The Four D’s Diagnostic Indicators Firstly, obsessive thoughts often interfere with the usual people’s acts and cause a surge of panic, disturbing to complete their work.
• Obsessive – Compulsive Personality Disorder: Diagnosis and Treatment Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is the term used to refer to a mental condition in which a victim is too preoccupied with perfectionism, orderliness, and interpersonal and mental control, at the expense of efficiency, openness and […]
• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder One of them is the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder the syndrome which causes people to have recurring, unwanted thoughts and drives them to uncontrollable, repetitive actions.
• The Obsessive-Compulsive Psychological Disorder In addition, the disorder affects the way he relates with the likes of Simon Bishop and the gay painter both of whom are his neighbors.
• Psychological Issues: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Nevertheless, the study showed that the majority of the correspondents who suffered from the disease were Judaism. Moreover, individuals suffering from the disorder refrain from visiting hospitals in fear of humiliation and guilt attributed to […]
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: Definition, Types and Causes Efforts to raise people’s awareness about OCD have been on the rise since the late 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century.
• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in an Asian American Patient The issue of substance use should also be addressed as one of the possible factors that may have exacerbated the patient’s sense of anxiety and prompted the aggravation of her OCD.
• Discussion: Anxiety Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders To be diagnosed with a specific phobia, one must exhibit several symptoms, including excessive fear, panic, and anxiety. Specific phobias harm the physical, emotional, and social well-being of an individual.
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in Adults Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is an anxiety disorder that is represented by uncontrollable, repetitive and unwanted thoughts.
• Neurotransmission and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder The proteins and the other substances that the neuron needs for its function are manufactured by the cell body or soma and the nucleus and the neuron is known as the “manufacturing and recyling plant”.
• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in a Young Woman After Bess’s mother’s serious intervention into the course of her life, Bess was absorbed in her studies and later in her work.
• Psychodynamic and Cognitive-Behavioral Approaches of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder In this article, after overviewing both the psychodynamic and cognitive behavioral models of OCD, Kempke and Luyten point out that as opposed to the cognitive behavioral model, the arena of psychodynamic approach to OCD is […]
• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Minor Psychiatric Illnesses However, the severe obsessive-compulsive disorder may lead to major incapacitation adversely affecting the life of the victims. When an individual exhibits or complains about obsession or compulsion or both to the extent that his normal […]
• Howard Hughes’s Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder The purpose of this paper is to discuss the obsessive-compulsive disorder in the case of Howard Hughes, with the help of the Big Five personality model.
• Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder and Care Hospitalization is a rare treatment method for patients who have an obsessive compulsory personality disorder. For instance, new drugs such as Prozac and SRRI are proved to offer a reprieve to patients suffering obsessive compulsory […]
• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Diagnostics Developmental Disorder: No diagnosis No diagnosis can be made since the woman used to be an active member of her community. Medical Disorder: No diagnosis The client maintains that she does not have medical issues.
• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Its Causes While it is possible to clearly articulate the symptoms of OCD, the final and definite answer to the question about the causes of the disorder is yet to be found. Currently, it is hypothesised that […]
• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Diagnosis and Therapy The ritual, i.e, the street corner, may be a response to an obsessional theme or a way to lower an underlying anxiety.
• Experience of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder The obsessive-compulsive disorder is a rather common psychiatric illness, which has a tendency to occupy a significant time in the mind of the patient and provides a feeling that he/she is not in control of […]
• Mindfulness Therapy for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder It is important to introduce the patient to the mindfulness intervention as early as possible by inviting him to take part in a 5-minute mindfulness-of-breath exercise in order to note particular reflections about the nature […]
• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) – Psychology The other sign relates to the fear of lacking the need in life and consequently losing whatever has been acquired and is in possession.
• The Treatment of Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder Thus, Madam Y is to be convinced of the therapist’s good intentions. Unconditional positive regard is also one of the most important ways which is to be used to help Madam Y.
• Brief Overview of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) The strange acts torment the mind and the distractions affect the social wellbeing of the patient. The brain has the “orbital frontal cortex” that is responsible of reporting and soliciting the rest of the brain […]
• Freud’s Theory of Personality Development and OCD The ego, on the other hand, is in the middle and manages both the desires of the Id and those of the superego.
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This Is What It's Like To Live With OCD

Courtesy of the writer

I am not shy about having OCD. On the contrary, I am obnoxiously vocal about it. I talk about it, I write about it, and I laugh about it. Constantly. When I applied to college, OCD was the topic of my personal essay. I joked that OCD is a lot like Netflix in that, as soon as you send one symptom back to the distributor, you get a shiny new one in the mail. (Yeah, I wrote that essay in 2010 and it’s already ridiculously dated. Netflix once sent DVDs through the mail . Those were dark times.)

I don’t talk about my OCD with anything even approaching sincerity. I handle most of my problems through a thick veneer of sarcasm and mockery. It provides a comfortable distance from something that can otherwise be overwhelming. I feel much less like I’m whining when I’m joking. And humor makes it easier to share with others.

I was diagnosed with severe OCD (and ADHD) when I was four years old, so I don’t really remember what it’s like to live without it. That’s right; my psychiatric history is now old enough to vote. That sort of makes it easier—it’s hard to miss normal when you’ve never known it. And I was fortunate enough to have what many people don’t: access to superb mental health services, and a mother who recognized the symptoms when I started washing my hands until they bled and when I began edging around the pile of dirty clothes in the laundry room like I was afraid it would swallow me whole. Despite the severity of my obsessions and compulsions, I’ve been successful because of this support.

This sort of germophobia is what most people think of when they hear of OCD, but the symptoms of OCD vary greatly over time and from person to person. Some of my obsessions weren’t so easy to recognize as such—in kindergarten, I would spend story time straightening my socks, unable to get them in the exact position I wanted. I had to change my underwear multiple times a day because I was constantly convinced that it was wet. I remember going to Disney World a few months before I was diagnosed—my father walked around the amusement park with a bag full of little girls’ panties. (That would have been fun to explain to security: “No officer, I’m not a pervert; my daughter’s just crazy.”)

My parents have done so much to help me overcome my OCD. As I grew up, they encouraged me to be open with them about my struggles with mental illness . It was expected that I would share my problems and go to them for support. Outside the house, however, the message was clear: don’t talk about OCD. Don’t talk about mental illness. It’s weird; it makes people uncomfortable; it’s not socially acceptable. But I couldn’t have hidden my OCD if I tried, and, oh, I tried.

In middle school, as I hit puberty and my body chemistry changed, my medication stopped working. Entirely. My symptoms skyrocketed, but still I tried with everything I had to hide them. Some of my compulsions were easy to cover up. When I had to spin the dial of my combination lock four times before I could open my locker, I could pretend that I’d gotten my code wrong and had to try again. But it’s pretty noticeable when the girl sitting beside you in math class has to bang her chair against the ground eight times before she can sit down. (Particularly if she came in halfway through class because she was busy spinning her combination lock.) And there was no good excuse I could think of to cover that up. So I stopped trying.

I started talking about my OCD all the time, to explain my actions, to try to make people understand.

I started with my peers: tweens with no filter who had never seen a person beat her chest like Tarzan or hold up an entire line full of kids by stopping in the middle of the hallway to hop on one foot. They rudely demanded to know why I freaked out whenever I smudged ink across my paper or why I sometimes shook my head like a wet dog. I did my best to explain my disorder in simple terms that even a ten-year-old could understand. But at that age, my peers still lacked the emotional if not the general intelligence to understand my condition. (Tweens and sociopaths have that in common.) I decided: If they wanted me to shut up and sit down, I was gonna stand and shout from the mountaintops. Never let anyone tell you that spite is a poor motivator.

High school was better. I applied and was accepted to a writing program at Carver Center for Arts and Technology, where my peers were understanding and empathetic. My medication stabilized and I began cognitive behavioral therapy. I exchanged my more noticeable compulsions for subtler ones. I didn’t hide my symptoms, but I learned to control them for my own benefit. Part of controlling compulsions is acknowledging and accepting the consequences of not performing them: “If I don’t proofread my English paper a fifth time, the worst case scenario is that I miss a typo.” This sort of reasoning helps bring my obsessions into perspective—a few points off an essay for a typo is not the end of the world. I’ll survive.

The summer before I went to college, I went to see a specialist in tic disorders, who informed me that my specific type of OCD is called Tourettic OCD, which is basically Tourette’s Syndrome and OCD slammed into one diagnosis. The Tourette’s was not a new development. It had always been there, lurking in the shadow of my OCD. In medicine, comorbidity is the simultaneous existence of two or more disorders in a patient. For most people, it’s a word that means life just got a lot more complicated. But I was elated—this doctor had given me more words, new language, to describe my experiences. I learned to differentiate between compulsions and tics and went off to college with new strategies for handling my mental illnesses.

Despite this, my first semester was still like getting thrown into the deep end without floaties. OCD hates changes in routine. College meant roommates, living away from home, and sharing a bathroom with an entire hall of strangers. But there’s nothing quite like trial by fire, and after a few nervous breakdowns, I settled into a new routine and my symptoms abated. I went through the same ordeal just this past year after graduation—transition periods are always rough for me, but I get through them with a lot of lorazepam and a mantra of this, too, shall pass .

Cecelia, front-center, with her college fencing teammates.

I still have my daily challenges. The cough I developed during a recent bout of illness has stuck with me in the form of a tic. It takes me a long time to get ready in the morning when I have to check and recheck my backpack to make sure I have everything I need. The skin of my knuckles is rough and calloused from trying to crack them too often. I still spend way too much time worrying about climate change.

When someone asks me why I exhibit some strange behavior or another, or so much as casts a curious glance my way when they see me blinking sporadically, I talk them through my diagnosis. I tell them about my evolving understanding over the years as I gained more information and science progressed. Then I talk them through my ever-changing symptoms and my treatment. (I have been on, at various points in my life, Paxil, Zoloft, Luvox, Prozac, Buspar, Lexapro, Ativan, clonazepam, Concerta, Focalin, Adderall, Strattera, and Daytrana. My psychiatrist has also been trying to talk me into testing out antipsychotics for years). Most difficult to explain are the urges that cause my tics. There are really no words for it, but I imagine it’s similar to the feeling of thousands of ants crawling across your skin. What can you do but try to shake them off? I explain to curious parties how OCD can manifest differently in different people. And I make jokes about it. I refuse to be ashamed of my condition. In public, I don’t surreptitiously slip my medication past my lips between sips from my water bottle—I toss a Zoloft into the air, throw my head back, and see if I can catch it in my mouth. I don’t mean to brag, but my mouth-eye coordination is unparalleled.

I’ve come a long way from the terrified little girl who cowered around dirty laundry, as my psychiatrist frequently reminds me . “I’m so proud of you,” she told me just the other day. “Just a few years ago, you couldn’t touch the sink faucet in your own bathroom.”

“Yeah, and now look at me,” I said. “You know, I was at the mall earlier and I dropped part of my cookie on the floor, and I just picked it up and ate it.”

“That’s disgusting,” she said. “Don’t do that again.”

I am not my OCD, but my OCD has played an enormous role in shaping who I am. So I can’t talk about myself without talking about it, and I really like talking about myself. Talking about OCD got me into my first-choice school. Talking about it got me here, on SELF.com. And I hope talking about it can also do others a world of good.

When we talk about OCD, we raise awareness of mental illness. We disseminate information so that people can recognize their symptoms and get a diagnosis, get treatment, get help. We open doors for those who’ve always known that something is wrong with them, but who have never had the words to articulate it. We deepen understanding and reduce stigma among the general public. We increase the chances of getting funding for research that could lead to better treatments. And we make life a little easier for people like me.

For information on OCD and treatment options, visit the National Institute of Mental Health website .

This Video Shows How Some People With OCD Feel Everyday:

Photo Credit: Daniel Grizelj / Getty

SELF does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Any information published on this website or by this brand is not intended as a substitute for medical advice, and you should not take any action before consulting with a healthcare professional.

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How to Write A College Essay on OCD: Intro to Conclusion

Writing a College Essay on OCD

Mental illnesses are common. Over half of Americans are diagnosed with a mental disorder during their life. Mental illnesses are disorders that affect a person’s thinking, mood, feelings, and behavior.

The diseases may be occasional or chronic. They can affect the patient’s ability to relate to others and their daily functions.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is increasingly gaining recognition in recent years. As more people become aware of the psychological illness, the affected are increasingly inclined to seek care.

A person diagnosed with OCD is likely to find it challenging to cope with their symptoms and lead a regular life. It can be very challenging to Stop or cope with obsessive thinking and manage compulsion.

What is OCD

OCD is a mental health condition that affects people of all backgrounds and ages, including children and the elderly. It is characterized by unpleasant thoughts, anxieties, or obsessions that result in compulsions or repetitive activities.

Obsessions and compulsions create severe distress by interfering with daily activities.

When OCD develops, the person becomes trapped in a loop of obsessions and compulsions.

Obsessions are unwelcome, intrusive thoughts, ideas, or desires that cause severe distress.

Compulsions are acts that a person engages in to banish obsessions or reduce distress.

The person recognizes that their compulsions are absurd and unreasonable. Yet, they refuse to give up because they fear the repercussions.

How to Write a College Essay on OCD

Writing a college essay on OCD involves:

1. Starting with a Plan

The initial step in any essay should be to create a documented plan. Start formulating a plan as soon as you receive your OCD essay question and give it some attention.

2. Initiating your Research

After considering the question and establishing an initial approach, gather information and evidence.

3. Create a Point of Contention

Every good OCD essay has a strong and well-supported argument. Contention refers to your essay’s core topic or argument. It serves as both a response to the query and a focal point for your writing.

4. Outline your Essay

Start penning down a possible essay format once you have completed most of your research and have a strong argument. This doesn’t have to be complicated.

A simple outline will do.

5. Create a Captivating Introduction

The introduction is the pivot of your essay. It is also where you give an overview of your work. Have a short, confident, and punchy introduction.

It is essential because it is the reader’s initial experience with your writing. It is also your first answer to the question and explanation of your viewpoint.

6. Compose Complete Paragraphs

Write 100 to 200-word long paragraphs that are mini-essays in themselves. Avoid the mistake many students make of writing short, one- or two-line paragraphs.

7. Conclude with a Strong Statement

Restate or emphasize your essay’s main point in the last paragraph of your essay. Aim for a solid, polished, and smooth ending.

8. Cite and Reference your Sources

Use Citations or references to credible sources to back up the facts, ideas, and arguments in your essay. This is one of the ways to avoid plagiarism in your essay.

9. Proofread, Edit, and get Feedback

Proofread, edit, and redraft your essay, if necessary, before sending it for evaluation.        

OCD is a well-researched subject. There aren’t a lot of new studies that you can include in your OCD essay. As a result, you can use the following plan to organize your OCD essay.

1st point in OCD essay

You can describe how OCD develops. According to scientists, psychological and biological variables are thought to induce OCD.

OCD Essay Point 2

Then, in your essay about OCD, discuss the disorder’s symptoms. Focus on Obsessions or intrusive thoughts, and compulsions. Compulsions are mental acts or compulsive behaviors that a person feels compelled to engage in owing to an obsession.

Usually, the practices help lessen or prevent pain due to an obsession. Common compulsions include:

• Repeated cleaning of household items
• Counting to a specific number repeatedly
• Seeking acceptance or reassurance all the time
• Putting items in a particular order or arrangement
• Checking switches, locks, or appliances regularly
• Ritualized or excessive hand washing, tooth brushing, showering, or toileting

OCD Essay Point 3

Finally, discuss OCD treatment options, including pharmacological, behavioral, and cognitive approaches. A patient can concentrate on learning to manage symptoms under the supervision of a skilled therapist and through behavioral therapy.

Explain that a person can learn to effectively manage symptoms and regain function in their lives if they are committed to this treatment.

If you find this method for writing an OCD essay to be too broad, your essay could narrow your focus on symptoms, for example. You can explain how obsessions influence a person in your OCD essay.

Also, you could discuss the typical items that people are obsessed with, the negative repercussions of compulsions, and so on.

Besides, you can interview someone with OCD to make your essay more informative and engaging. Remember that it takes up a lot of time in a person’s life and creates significant impairment.

Also, keep in mind that patients can get help irrespective of their ideas and behaviors or the severity of their symptoms.

Best Sources for Your References on OCD Essay

OCD-related organizations and resources include:

Mental Health America

International OCD Foundation

National Alliance on Mental Illness

Anxiety Disorders Association of America

National Institute on Mental Health. OCD

The American Psychiatric Association (APA)

The Top 100 Cited Articles on Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

OCD – MedlinePlus https://medlineplus.gov

OCD – NCBI https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › books ›

9 Examples of OCD Essay Topics

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder essay topic examples include:

OCD In Children

Living with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

OCD- Psychiatric Disease

Research on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

OCD: Causes and Treatment

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in The Aviator

Outline and Evaluate Psychological Explanations For OCD

Clinical Psychology OCD treatment and approaches

Outline and evaluate Two Biological Explanations for OCD

Other Info on OCD in School

Many people who do not have OCD also experience troubling thoughts or actions. However, these thoughts and habits rarely cause problems in everyday life.

OCD patients have persistent thoughts and strict habits. Failure to engage in the behaviors creates a lot of distress. Many people with OCD are aware or suspect that their obsessions are irrational or unreal.

Ignoring Compulsions can lead to severe manic episodes. Students with OCD may find it difficult to concentrate in class or finish projects.

They feel compelled to undertake routines such as hand washing, rewriting sentences, or reorganizing notes. Intrusive thoughts can be both distracting and disturbing to the learning process.

Others may believe they are, which is known as limited insight. People with OCD have a hard time disengaging from their obsessive thoughts or stopping their compulsive behaviors.

It persists even when they are aware that their obsessions are unrealistic. In the United States, OCD affects two to three percent of the population. It is slightly more prevalent in women than men.

Typically, OCD starts in infancy, adolescence, or early adulthood. The average age of onset is 19 years old. An OCD diagnosis requires obsessions and compulsions that last more than one hour a day.

These cause significant discomfort and interfere with work or social functioning.

Obsessions are recurring and persistent ideas, impulses, or pictures that elicit unpleasant emotions like worry or revulsion. Many people with OCD are aware that their thoughts, impulses, or images are excessive or irrational.

However, logic and reasoning will not be able to alleviate the anguish caused by these unwanted thoughts. Most OCD patients try to distract themselves from the obsessions by performing compulsions, or suppressing or ignoring the obsessions.

James Lotta

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Overcoming OCD – The College Student’s Guide

This site is for you if you:

• Have been diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
• Worry that you might have OCD
• Think you might be going crazy because of confusing fears and worries that won’t go away.
• Have strange intrusive thoughts you don’t understand and feel compelled to perform certain actions in response to these thoughts

You’re not alone, and there is an effective treatment for OCD — so you can look forward to relief from OCD and getting your life back.

You’re not alone. Approximately 1 in 40 U.S. adults has OCD. With Cognitive Behavior Therapy, relief can be just a couple of months away.

You’re Not Crazy

It’s normal to be concerned about your symptoms and maybe even a little afraid of what is happening to you.  But you’re not “crazy” or any other label that makes you feel worse.  OCD is a fairly common disorder that is neurobiological in nature.  Researchers have found that certain areas of the brain work differently in individuals who have OCD compared to those who don’t.  There is absolutely no reason to be ashamed of having this disorder, but it’s important that you understand it and learn how to control it.  With effective treatment, you should be able to do whatever you want in life and be whatever you want to be.

What Exactly IS OCD?

OCD is a disorder that has a neurobiological basis.  It interferes with how the brain functions, and its effects can actually be seen on brain scans. With OCD, a person has two specific symptoms:

Obsessions — disturbing, recurring thoughts, fears, doubts or urges that won’t go away. It’s as if your brain got stuck in the “worry” position and can’t restart.

Compulsions — repetitive actions, or “rituals,” that you feel compelled to do to feel better.  These actions can be done overtly, like washing your hands, or covertly, like saying mental prayers.  Unfortunately, you feel better only temporarily.  The more you perform the compulsions, the stronger and more frequent the obsessions become.

Learn more about OCD and its symptoms

You’re Not Alone

When you consider that one in 40 adults and one in 100 children has OCD, it’s obvious that you are certainly not alone.  This is a fairly common disorder and it is treatable.  OCD sufferers come from every age group, race, ethnicity and socioeconomic background.

Why Haven’t I Heard of OCD Before Now?

OCD isn’t a new disorder, but it was not well understood — and little was published about its symptoms and treatment — until the past few decades. Even today, not all physiciians, psychologists, educators or campus administrators recognize OCD when they see it.

Learn more about the rise in awareness today.

What is the Treatment for OCD? How Fast Does It Work?

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), sometimes accompanied by medication, is the gold standard treatment for OCD.  It is recommended by nationally- recognized institutions such as the Mayo Clinic and Harvard Medical School.  Some studies show that more than 85% of people who complete a course of CBT experience significant relief from OCD symptoms.  Relief can be just a couple of months away.

In some ways, OCD is like other health conditions such as asthma, allergies or diabetes.  When properly treated, these chronic conditions are manageable, and are actually managed by millions of people around you. Like these other conditions, OCD requires a commitment to treatment. While there is currently no cure for OCD, CBT can help you get better and teach you how to keep your OCD under control.

Learn more about CBT.

What About Medication? Can’t I Just Take Some Pills?

Today’s easy answer for just about everything seems to be to take a pill.  But for OCD, medication alone isn’t the best treatment.

Find out why CBT is the clear treatment recommendation.

Why is OCD happening to me now?

Illness can happen at any time, and college life is a stressful time that can be vastly different from your pre-college life at home.  In fact, it’s not unusual to first have OCD symptoms at college. Read more about why college can “trigger” OCD.

Could My Symptoms Be Some Other Mental Disorder?

A number of conditions frequently co-exist, or “partner” with OCD.  Disorders that can occur with OCD – referred to as “comorbid” disorders – include depression, bipolar disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism, tic disorders (including Tourette Syndrome), eating disorders and anxiety disorders.  And there are several other disorders related to OCD that may also be comorbid with OCD.  As a result, it can be confusing to try to sort out what your particular symptoms actually are.

Learn more about related conditions and disorders of the “OCD Spectrum”.

What’s Wrong With Doing My Compulsions? It Makes Me Feel Better.

Continuing to perform rituals in response to your obsessions can actually make your OCD worse.

Learn more about why you need to overcome OCD through treatment.

Where Can I Go For Help?

Start with your college or university’s student health center or counseling service.  Tell them you think you might have OCD and want to see a cognitive behavior therapist.  If your counseling center doesn’t have a cognitive behavior therapist on board, ask them to help you find one.  If the staff doesn’t have information about cognitive behavior therapists for OCD, you can contact Beyond OCD to discuss therapy options for OCD.  Your goal is to get relief from OCD as soon as possible.

Can a Support Group Help Me?

A support group can provide information, encouragement and emotional support for people who have OCD.  It can play a very important role in OCD recovery, but it’s not a substitute for treatment.

Learn more about support groups.

When Money Is A Problem

If your student health center or counseling service is able to provide Cognitive Behavior Therapy, it may be covered under your student health insurance.  If you need to go to a cognitive behavior therapist in private practice, it could be more costly.  When money is an issue, it can present challenges to getting OCD treatment, but don’t give up.

Learn more about finding financial help.

Frequently Asked Questions about OCD and Its Treatment

Of course you have questions about OCD. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions by college students:

• What causes OCD?
• Is OCD inherited? Can stress cause OCD?
• Why can’t a person just stop their OCD?
• Is there an online test I can take to see if I have OCD?
• What’s the best treatment for OCD?
• Can you guarantee I’ll get better with treatment?
• Do I have to be hospitalized to treat my OCD?
• What if I don’t get treatment for my OCD?
• My college “doesn’t treat OCD”. Now What Can I Do? Should I change schools to get OCD treatment?
• What are my options if my school offers CBT but limits the number of visits?
• Should I take a leave of absence to get treatment?
• Are there accommodations available through disabilities services?
• Should I tell my family I have OCD?
• What Is OCD?
• Cognitive Behavior Therapy

Dealing with OCD in College

Stephen Smith, founder of nOCD, first had the idea to make a treatment app for people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) after experiencing intrusive thoughts for the first time during college. OCD was taking over his life, but he couldn’t find effective or affordable treatment on campus, forcing him to withdraw from school while he pursued therapy. It’s fairly typical for OCD symptoms to surface for the first time between the ages of 21 and 25, sometimes triggered by periods of increased stress and responsibility. For Stephen and many others, college living provides the perfect storm of factors for OCD to rear its ugly head.

On-campus counseling centers are a great resource for many students who experience mental health problems during college, but for students with OCD, they might miss the mark. OCD is a chronic disorder in which recurring thoughts, urges, or images (obsessions) trigger anxiety, decreased temporarily by rituals or behaviors (compulsions) that actually serve to reinforce obsessions over time. It can be debilitating, but effective treatment does exist. The accepted standard is a combination of medication and exposure response prevention (ERP), in which a therapist works with a patient to expose him or her to anxiety-triggering thoughts or images while tolerating distress without the help of an OCD ritual. Despite the prevalence of the disorder – approximately 1 in 40 people worldwide meet the criteria – there are very few therapists trained in ERP. Those who do specialize in OCD typically have no shortage of clients, and rarely accept insurance. Finding OCD treatment anywhere is hard; finding OCD treatment at college can be impossible.

Technological solutions like nOCD can be an especially good option for college students:. young people, who tend to be tech savvy and excited about innovation might benefit from customizable ERP exercises, automatic tracking, and a social network of other real people with OCD. Below are some common problems faced by college students struggling to feel better, and how a tool like nOCD may help.

Between studying for exams, showing up to practice, and going to parties, how do I make time for ERP? By the time I get home, I’m exhausted, and purposefully triggering my anxiety is the last thing I want to do. ERP is challenging and exhausting – just like OCD. But even a few minutes of ERP per day will contribute to recovery, while sending a powerful message to OCD that you’re working to regain control over its unwelcome presence. Traditionally, ERP took place in weekly sessions in a therapist’s office. But research suggests treatment is more effective when delivered through a variety of planned and unplanned exposures that are built into daily activities. For example, if a student suffers from harm OCD, and fears she’ll lose control and hurt someone while holding a sharp object, she might build her exposures into the meals she’s already attending in the dining hall, purposefully triggering her anxiety and delaying the accompanying ritual by holding a butter knife at breakfast or a steak knife at dinner. Using an app to help build ERP into her daily life and track progress means she doesn’t have to set aside free time she probably doesn’t have to start to feel better.

I’m already embarrassed by my symptoms. What if people think it’s weird I’m doing ERP in the dining hall ? OCD thrives in solitude. You may not be ready to shout from the quad that you have intrusive thoughts about contracting a disease or running someone over with your car, but it can be helpful to connect with others who understand your journey. The nOCD Group feature is a great place to connect with other real people with OCD, and to provide and receive support. Summoning your scariest OCD obsessions in public places and around other people can be anxiety provoking. But remember: while you’re logging treatment progress, the outside observer will probably assume you’re just posting on Instagram or checking email!

College life makes me way more stressed out. Is this why my OCD is getting worse? College can be stressful, and stress can increase the severity of OCD. OCD-specific treatment like ERP is critical, but practicing mindfulness or meditation, which many colleges offer through the counseling counter or clubs, can help decrease the power OCD thoughts have over you. You can find a range of apps that can help you practice mindfulness meditation in the comfort of your dorm or on the go. Many of us spend lots of time listening to music through headphones – why not sub out ten minutes of Spotify for some meditation? According to one study, patients who practiced mindfulness instead of distraction experienced less of an urge to follow an unwanted thought with a compulsion.

Questions or comments? Reach the nOCD team on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram @treatmyocd.

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Phoebe Kranefuss works in content marketing at nOCD, a Chicago-based startup on a mission to make OCD treatment more effective and accessible for people everywhere. Prior to writing about mental health, she studied English and worked in technology.

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Navigating college with OCD

Posted November 26, 2018

By Paul Robert Pasalowicz

This story is part of our blog series called “Stories from the OCD Community.”  Stories from the community are submitted and edited by Toni Palombi. If you are interested in sharing your story you can view submission details at  www.iocdf.org/ocd-stories .

College is a swimming pool of deadlines, targets, expectations, and stress for everyone that chooses to go through the process. With obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), these stressors can cause a world of suffering. College was completely and utterly overwhelming for me at first; my OCD flared up terribly. However, this flare up at the beginning of the most important stage of my life taught me to approach the situation in the exact opposite way I previously thought to, which was by letting go and embracing uncertainty. As a result, I changed the way I handled problems and managed my health, and began to excel in class.

This is what I learned about navigating the college experience:

Mental health comes first: Before all scholarly activities, you should set a strict self-care/mental health plan. While everyone’s plan will be different, you need to make sure that you come before any deadline, target, or grade. Good action plan examples could include regularly meeting with a psychologist/psychiatrist, or working out every day before class to decrease your anxiety levels. Most colleges offer student counseling which is a great resource to turn to in times of distress. If you feel like you’re suffering at all in college take a step back and redevelop your OCD action plan. When you take care of your mind first, the rest of your academic career will be much easier to manage.

Identify your passion: The topics of majors, minors, and careers are gold for the OCD monster. It is important to keep your path very simple: study and follow what attracts you; in my experience, you can never go wrong with this strategy. College is about you, not your parents, grandparents or anyone else. If you take the time to understand yourself, your passions, your values, and your goals, college can bring you great success. If we are pursuing something we are interested in, and striving to learn each day, what more can we do?

GPA/career track insights: The grade point average (GPA) you maintain can set you apart from the pack in college, and it is a very healthy target to worry about in moderation. If you’re not feeling engaged in your courses, or you’re trying but are unable to maintain a satisfactory GPA, you may want to consider a different track. When I was struggling, being proactive and talking with advisors about my interests of study right away helped me to choose a new field of study in which I could excel. Colleges offer majors and courses for people with different types of skills, talents, and interests. Once I was engaged in learning about a specific topic that interested me, obsessions about deadlines, targets, grades, and expectations fell by the wayside, because I was passionate and focused on my work.  Remember: college is simply a personal learning experience about what you are interested in, so you can develop the tools to pursue those interests in the world.

Let go and dance with uncertainty: In my opinion, this is the key to excelling in college for students living with OCD. Many outcomes that occur in life are out of our control. Striving to learn what attracts you can be stressful, but it can also lead you towards discovering your passion. Enjoy the ride!

Paul Robert Prasalowicz is a student at Temple University

I was diagnosed and it has been a thorn in my side. I am taking meds for it and over the years it has helped me. The doc that diagnosed me was not very sympatric. Said there was nothing she could do. Catholic Charities helped me very much. through therapy and referred me to a doctor who prescribed Prozac.

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How to Write a Perfect College Essay About OCD

The “perfect” college essay about OCD: it doesn’t exist.

Yet, somehow, in the back of our minds, we have a gnawing perfectionistic demon that can’t accept it. We’re not willing to accept that our essay can’t be perfect. We can’t!

Isn’t that ironic?

A guide on writing your college essay about OCD, telling you that perfectionism is impossible.

Now, here’s the truth: Yes, you can write about OCD in your college essay. You can also talk about its negative impacts on your life (with limits). But, to write the perfect college essay about OCD, you need to suspend the illusion of perfection.

Now, we’re going to explain this more in depth below. This guide is going to cover quite a few points, as writing about OCD is a bit complicated.

So, grab some popcorn —or whatever your preferred choice of snack is. Let’s get to the guide step-by-step!

Table of Contents

OCD is a Stronger College Essay Topic Than You May Think.

You can’t talk about everything..

• Suspend the Illusion of Control.

Consider Nuances to OCD That Neurotypicals are Blind to.

At the end of the day, the essay is about you and your strengths., unpopular opinion: you can be positive and cover sad topics at the same time, college essay about ocd example..

Professional College Application Help.

Contact us. we'll get to you within 24 hours. .

Just to clarify, let’s get definitions out of the way. Psychiatry.org defines OCD well. We’ve paraphrased it below for brevity.

“ Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)  is a disorder in which people have recurring, unwanted thoughts, ideas or sensations (obsessions). To get rid of the thoughts, they feel driven to do something repetitively (compulsions). The repetitive behaviors, such as hand washing/cleaning, checking on things, and mental acts like (counting) or other activities, can significantly interfere with a person’s daily activities and social interactions. …For people with OCD, thoughts are persistent and intrusive, and behaviors are rigid. Not performing the behaviors commonly causes great distress, often attached to a specific fear of dire consequences (to self or loved ones) if the behaviors are not completed. Many people with OCD know or suspect their obsessional thoughts are not realistic… Even if they know their intrusive thoughts are not realistic, people with OCD have difficulty disengaging… …A diagnosis of OCD requires the presence of obsessional thoughts and/or compulsions that are time-consuming (more than one hour a day), cause significant distress, and impair work or social functioning…” Source: Psychiatry.org Defining OCD

Okay so what makes OCD a strong essay topic? Well, it’s versatile.

In OCD, there are a lot of ways your condition can impact everyday life. This condition often has a snowballing effect on other aspects of your life. But, how one person experiences OCD may be different from another. This gives every OCD applicant unique in their own background and experiences.

In addition, OCD is a very complex mental condition to cope with. It’s not easy to compensate for OCD without getting oneself in a twist. Coming up with ways to cope with your condition can demonstrate resilience, dedication, creativity, lateral thinking, and sometimes even a moralistic concern for others.

For instance, OCD may make you compulsively write notes about yourself to see if you’re truly acting like “a good person.” People with self-flagellatory thoughts riddled with guilt often struggle with this, as their obsessive mind becomes addicting. The guilt comes roaring in; then, they become addicted to the obsessive impulse of alleviating that guilt via notetaking.

Overcoming this would demand much metacognition, emotional maturity, and willpower. These are all very powerful traits for students looking to get accepted into university.

Think about the ways OCD has forced you to develop methods of self improvement. And, leverage this self improvement to show the positive attributes of your character. Chances are, its unique traits make it special and stand out from the rest of the admissions pool.

Yup, this is the sad part.

Unfortunately, while college admissions is more accepting of mental health and conditions like ADHD, Dyslexia, and OCD, admissions officers are not always the most knowledgeable about these. They’re admissions officers after all, not psychologists.

There are some nuances to mental health conditions like OCD that are difficult to explain. While some topics are fine to cover, others are just too complicated to discuss in detail without letting the admissions office have doubts. Sometimes, it just takes far too many words to truly translate these into normal sentences that put you in a good light.

If you have a difficult part of OCD to explain, consider wisely whether to briefly cover this or explain in detail. Chances are, your college app essay prompt is going to range from 300-850 words; so, you likely won’t have the space required to truly articulate the complicated nuances surrounding troubling topics in OCD.

If you wish to cover certain controversial and complex OCD topics, consider writing about it in the additional comments section. The additional comments section is specifically for students to elaborate on unusual problems that can’t be articulated in a limited word space. So, use that to your advantage to explain your OCD.

Of course, this can be quite difficult. For, navigating the wording can be dangerous. If you need help with writing your college essays about OCD or explaining it in your additional comments section, speak with us for a free consultation. We’ll get back to you within 24 hours.

Note: Every institution has a different set of “additional comments” instructions. The University of California has them at the end of the essay section in the application portal, while other schools may require you to send them to their official website. Follow directions accordingly to publish your additional comments.

You Must Suspend the Illusion of Control.

Alright, here’s the hard part: if you really want to write your college essay about OCD, (or include it in your additional comments section) the most important rule is to suspend your illusion of control.

In particular, you must learn how to let go of the illusion that you can control what your admissions officers think of you.

It is common for the mind to delude itself into thinking it can control the outcomes of what other people think. This is false.

The best analogy for this is a street market. Think of the times you’ve visited popup markets on the street. Local farmer’s markets, the 626 night market, etc. Vendors are not there to force you to buy their cupcakes. And, no amount of persuasion can force you to buy $12 cookies. The fact of the matter is that vendors are responsible for making their food enticing. And, it’s the customer’s responsibility to make a decision based on said information.

The same principle applies for college application essays. You don’t force everyone to accept you (eat your cookies.) Instead, you just make yourself look as good as possible (within honesty) and don’t try to bend or twist your words to force an outcome.

It’s actually in letting go of control that you’ll open up a lot more. And, this is exactly what admissions officers are looking for in a successful application essay. They want to know you can be yourself whilst also showing the best of you —not the you that’s trying desperately to control the narrative and sway the decision.

When you do this, you’ll have much more control —ironically enough— over what you say in your essays. Additionally, your organic and honest personality will bleed through your writing. And, this is one of the biggest things to consider when trying to stand out to admissions officers —especially in a time when your readers are combing through applications for legitimacy.

Here’s an important thing to remember: people are NOT mind readers.

In particular, neurotypical people cannot understand what is going on in your mind if you don’t articulate it well enough. Just because you understand the nuances and peculiar difficulties of OCD does not mean others will understand.

It’s therefore your job to explain in simple terms what the subtler nuances to OCD are that they may not have considered. Your readers may have a rudimentary understanding of OCD. So, explain some of the things only other OCD students comprehend and make it digestible.

What is it like to have a compulsion? Why can’t you simply just “stop” the compulsion? How would you explain in simple terms why simply stopping the compulsion by force is not an option?

When you answer these questions and use language that is understandable for admissions officers to comprehend, they will have a better shot at empathizing with you. Additionally, you’ll be teaching them something about OCD that they may not have understood previously. You’re teaching them more about yourself, which may make them enjoy your character and leave a good impression throughout the admissions process.

For example, using coping mechanisms as an analogy to depict why compulsions are so second-nature can help your readers understand the nuances of OCD via extrapolation from their own personal experiences.

This is an important one people forget often. But, all essays circle back to being about you.

It’s about you, and how you would ultimately be a solid candidate to the university of your choice.

Now, don’t just outright blast to admissions officers, “this is why I’m the best candidate for your school!” That’s a bit too brash and uncreative.

Rather, it helps to be subtle with your messaging. So, weave throughout your text themes and motifs that highlight your strengths and characteristics. Make it such that, when admissions officers read your college essay about OCD, they can infer what kind of person you are.

Showing how you’ve overcome or learned to cope alongside OCD may help demonstrate your perseverance in tackling this condition. Or, it could also depict your ability for lateral thinking, especially in the context of conjuring creative ideas to cope.

Whatsoever positive character trait you choose, be sure to weave it throughout the text. Don’t just say, “that’s why I’m so smart,” or “that’s why I’m a very determined person driven by grit.” Make it subtle and show grace by integrating it via subtext! After all, it’s the admissions office’s job to understand you. They can do a character analysis of you without you feeding it to them!

This is a bit of a controversial opinion in the college admissions industry. However, here at PenningPapers, we’re dedicated to standing our ground here.

You can cover sad topics in your college essay about OCD. You’re not exempt from negative or sad events. And, you can even twist it to eventually being positive.

Why? Well, it’s because sh*t happens in life. Duh. Your readers aren’t stupid; and, they’re not going to cower away just because you share some sad topics. Now, some topics like doing drugs, suicide, etc are probably left outside the college admissions sphere. But, other than that, many people go through tragedy. It’s not all that uncommon for the everyday students to get cut below the knees at least once in their life. And, admissions officers are not naive to that.

They’re not focusing on how perfect and happy your topic is. Instead, they want to see how you wrestle and tackle the problems life has to offer you.

In fact, challenging and controversial college essay topics can sometimes work in your favor. For, they show admissions officers that you can battle against problems that have no clear solution.

Here’s an example below. Which of the following topics would you find more interesting?

• How OCD really isn’t all that bad, and you learned to overcome it with therapy.
• How OCD is a lot more complex than most students in your school understand; and, their attempts at being diversity-friendly and inclusive of people with the condition is predicated on a naive misunderstanding of the symptoms and their impact on everyday social interactions.

While the second one is certainly a scarier topic to write about, it’s infinitely more fascinating and “juicy.”

Most students are averse to those with OCD because they’re accepting of mental illness until symptoms begin to show. It’s an unsavory reality of many schools that claim to be in support of diversity, equity, and inclusion: they love the moral superiority that comes with fighting the good fight, but can’t handle the responsibility it entails.

Now, if you use this difficult and depressing topic and show how you can still draw positivity from it, then you’ll truly shine. There’s no use writing a college essay with no challenge. But, writing about how you can create compelling positive perspectives despite adversity is infinitely more interesting.

”There’s no use crying over spilt milk… or, is there? Maybe, in some epistemological, philosophical sense, there’s a reason why spilling milk, even by mistake, makes me a horrible, terrible, unworthy person. Perhaps 3 hours of rumination and endless circling around this miniscule guilt will reorient me through this mental Bermuda Triangle. Hint: it doesn’t. This is my experience with OCD. Well, there’s a lot with OCD. But, beyond the stereotypes about needing everything to be orderly, there’s also the obsessive —the ‘O’— element of OCD. It’s the mind’s proclivity to wrestle with guilt and self-deprecation. It’s this delusion of believing falsehoods about oneself, in this case my horrible character due to spilling milk, and endlessly ruminating on its validity even whilst knowing (in the most sensible and logical sense) that it’s false. The more I think, the more anxiety exacerbates. I’ve struggled with these obsessive thoughts all through high school, pilfering precious time out of my hands: what could’ve been extra time dedicated to meaningful extracurriculars and studying became endless circles of baseless guilt. After careful observation of when and what triggers my instances of compulsive guilt, I discovered I had to stop “feeding” the mental architecture I’ve created over time. Specifically, I “gave in” to obsessive thoughts as a way of temporarily inducing peace from anxiety and stress over intrusive guilt. Thus, I let the mental architecture I’ve created “decay” with unuse. But, simply forcing obsessive thoughts away wouldn’t work. Instead, I allowed the obsessive thoughts of guilt into my mind whilst not engaging with them. Whenever an impulse to write notes of my thoughts occurred, I denied. Whenever I wanted to play games to cope, I denied. I simply reoriented my thoughts at anything but playing with the thought itself. And, this “starving” of the obsessive thoughts eventually led it become manageable. Interestingly, this technique of disengagement also assisted me throughout multiple mediums including motivation, work ethic, creativity, and a whole host more. And, I’m excited to exercise these fascinating psychological strategies at the University of California.” UC Essay Prompt 5, Significant Challenge Essay About OCD

If you’re still struggling to write your college essay about OCD, or you don’t know if you should elaborate on it in the additional comments section, don’t fret! It’s a difficult topic, but certainly a worthy one! Consider speaking with us for a free consultation . Our college admissions experts will get back to you within 24 hours.

Our expertise has helped countless students write unconventional essays that have helped them get accepted into some of the best schools in the nation including UPenn, Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, NYU, and more!

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Is OCD a bad topic for a college essay?

My early application is due in a few days, and I have two eligible college essays to choose from. One of them I wrote for my National Merit Scholarship application, in which I describe my experience with OCD as an obstacle I have overcome. I think it’s a pretty strong essay, about an event that more significantly impacted me than what I wrote about in my other college essay. That said, I’ve spent more time on my other essay because I have, until now, thought that’d be the one I’d submit.

My question is, is it ill-advised to write about a mental disorder like OCD in a college essay? I’m not doing it to explain anything negative on my transcript. Do colleges not want to accept students that have these types of issues?

I would avoid discussing mental illnesses for a college essay. You want to show off the best side of you, rather than your weakness. Plus, if you have spent all of your time on the other application essay, that’s probably the better of the two. I would send that one in.

Advice on writing my college essay? Is mental health an alright topic? Answered

Hello! I am a rising senior and have starting writing my college essay. I have an idea but I just wanted to make sure that it was doable and not too cliché.

I have OCD and have been diagnosed since I was four years old. As I child, I had compulsions such as washing my hands until they were dry, cracked, and bleeding in order to avoid germs. This led to my diagnosis and furthermore the first of many prescriptions.

The prescriptions and the difficulties I faced as I struggled to find one that worked are the main point of the essay as I discuss how I saw them as magic and never questioned how they worked. When I finally decided to ask a psychiatrist how they worked I was shocked when he said that they didn’t know. He explained that some medication, particularly mental health medication worked but doctors were unsure why. This sparked a desire in me to understand the medications that had been such a big part of my life and find out how they worked. This has led me to want to study medicinal chemistry. This way I could help people in the future to have access to medicine that would work for them and their brain. This way I could prevent them from having to play the same prescription guessing game that I did.

I’m worried mental health is too cliché of a subject or this will read as a sob story. Any advice? Should I write my essay on this topic?

Thank you so much!

Earn karma by helping others:

I think it can depend on the admission officers reading your essays because I heard from some admission officers that mental health could be a "red flag." But that is not to discourage you from writing about mental health as it could be a great essay if you can write it well and translate to a great story. The reason why mental health could be seen as a "red flag" is because colleges have a large load of coursework and many students dropout due to inability to handle such classes with stress, mental health, etc...

It really depends on the mental health problem cause in my personal college essay I wrote about how my mother was deployed for 13 months and it affected my mental health (like depression, anxiety, what not) but I improved my academic profile as a result to make her proud so my "sob story" was positive. I like the concept of this considering you did have a spark and it seems overall positive so I think you should write about it! They eat stuff like this up, why you got into it and stuff similar to that. It would only be a problem for colleges if the work in school messed with your OCD which resulted in poor behaviors since colleges typically have a lot of work but I think you should do it! If you don't wanna go with this you should definitely just alter the view of mental health, but make sure is true to you.

Hi @abbieeidda !

This sounds like a good personal statement idea which also has a nice tie-in with your intended major. That said, writing about mental health in college applications is risky: it might raise doubts (valid or not) about your ability to perform lots of rigorous coursework.

The way to get around this is making sure you have a clear arc in your narrative. Your essay should lay out your difficulties with OCD, but then also show how you've learned to manage it and become a highly effective person. It could then also move on to you deciding to study medicinal chemistry.

This format will help prevent assuage concerns about your ability to succeed with a college-level course load. It will also help you avoid the "sob story" trope by focusing more on your journey with OCD and ensuring you have a more complete narrative.

So, in short, I think it's a good idea. You just need to be careful in how you go about it.

Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you Shane! Do you know if there is a place where I ask someone to review my essay? I think I have finished it but I was just wondering if there was a resource where it could be checked by an expert. I am kind of worried that colleges won’t want to accept me bc of my mental illness as you stated. I don’t want them to think that I can’t handle rigorous course work. Thanks again!

Hi @abbieeidda , we actually have two ways you can have your essay reviewed with CollegeVine. The first is a peer-reviewed, which works kind of like Communities in that your essay will be reviewed by a student in exchange for Karma. The other option is a professional review, where you select and pay an expert to give you professional feedback. You can find the links to both options here: https://www.collegevine.com/experts/essay-review

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Talking it Over (1872) by Enoch Wood Perry. Courtesy the Met Museum , New York

Philosophy of the people

How two amateur schools pulled a generation of thinkers from the workers and teachers of the 19th-century american midwest.

by Joseph M Keegin   + BIO

‘As they say that Helen of Argos had that universal beauty that every body felt related to her, so Plato seems to a reader in New England an American genius. His broad humanity transcends all sectional lines.’ – from ‘Plato; or, the Philosopher’; Representative Men (1850) by Ralph Waldo Emerson

‘Only Hegel is fit for America – is large enough and free enough.’ – from an unpublished lecture on German philosophy; Notebooks by Walt Whitman (1819-92)

What is the future of philosophy in the United States? This question weighs heavily on teachers and scholars as philosophy departments around the country – at schools rich and poor, large and small – blink out of existence. Some are eliminated as part of an institution-wide downsizing effort, as operating budgets and endowments contract; others are simply pillaged for resources to give to other programs that more readily display the one virtue recognised by administrators: ‘impact’.

However, compared with other disciplines in the humanities experiencing rapid decline in majors and enrolments – English, history, languages and so forth – philosophy hangs on as a common minor or second, subordinate major for students pursuing degrees in law, politics or the natural sciences. Nevertheless, philosophy departments routinely wind up on the chopping block when administrators and educational consultants write up their plans for institutional restructuring, even if their elimination brings no obvious benefit.

Consider Manhattan College, for instance, a Catholic institution in New York that announced the elimination of their philosophy major earlier this year. In an interview with the campus newspaper, an anonymous faculty member said:

Philosophy is one of the strongest, fastest-growing programs at Manhattan College … we have over 20 per cent more students taking philosophy classes this year than last year … Closing the philosophy major and minor does not save any money.

This is just one example of many, all of which tell that the circumstances for studying philosophy in a college or university setting, democratised by the post-Second World War expansion of higher education, are in the midst of great change, if not dying out altogether.

T he history of philosophical study in the US offers some insight into what this great change might look like. In the mid-19th-century US Midwest, two schools of philosophy appeared whose rivalry and work would shape a century of how philosophy was learned and studied, and not just in the US.

The Platonists of Illinois were centred around Hiram Kinnaird Jones of Jacksonville. The Hegelians of the St Louis Philosophical Society, meanwhile, were led by Heinrich Conrad (‘Henry Clay’) Brokmeyer and William Torrey Harris. These were movements of amateurs in the fullest and best sense: their ranks were composed of non-professional students of philosophy – lawyers, doctors, schoolteachers, factory workers and housewives – motivated by personal edification and the earnest pursuit of truth rather than professional achievement or status-acquisition. They conducted their activity against the backdrop of a country reeling from a bloody civil war, tenuously unified and engaged in an energetic campaign of westward expansion and industrialisation. The very intelligibility of their world had been thrown into question, and these readers and thinkers on the prairie found help in the great minds of the past. ‘The time,’ writes Denton J Snider, a member of the St Louis circle, ‘was calling loudly for First Principles’ – and, for their readers, Plato and Hegel offered paths toward them.

Labour provides the means of satisfying the hunger of the body; reading and thinking, the hunger of the soul

Born in 1826 in Germany, Henry Clay Brokmeyer had come to the US as a teenager with ‘twenty-five cents cash in my pocket, and a knowledge of three words of the English language in my head,’ either to escape military service or because his strictly religious mother had burned his volumes of Goethe; reports vary. He was expelled from two colleges – Georgetown in Kentucky, Brown in Providence – before moving to Newark, learning tanning and shoemaking, and decamping to the West to find work. But in St Louis, where he rented a small cabin and took a job in a foundry, Brokmeyer found a distinctly New World vitality and dynamism that gave him hope for the project of civilisation. As he writes in his posthumously published Mechanic’s Diary (1910):

I have travelled over the country from the state of Maine to the state of Louisiana, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the buffalo pastures upon the Eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, and if there is a centre of population that has as fine a country tributary to it as the city of St Louis – East, West, North and South – it has escaped my observation. Here if anywhere industry, economy and honest conduct must mean success – unless we have to believe that the world is but an annex of hell, as some people seem to think.

But civilisation, he knew, requires more than labour; it also needs thought, which is what Brokmeyer had come to the US to do:

On the upper shelf, I have Thucydides, Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes, ‘The Republic of Plato’, with the dialogues called Critias, Parmenides, ‘The Sophist’ and the ‘Metaphysics’ of Aristotle. On the second shelf I have the works of Goethe and Hegel, complete. On the third, I have Shakespeare, Moliere, Calderon, and on the lowest shelf I have Sterne and Cervantes.

Thus, the few worldly possessions that adorn the cabin of a St Louis ironworker: the wisdom, from worlds both ancient and modern, of ‘those who have made man’s life human.’ Labour provides the means of satisfying the hunger of the body; reading and thinking, the hunger of the soul. But a good life can be formed only in the unity of these two essential activities: man does not live on bread alone, nor can he live without it. And Brokmeyer’s book – a Bildungsroman styled in diary form à la Thoreau – shows how it’s done:

I find it an excellent practice to put a page, or paragraph, of Aristotle, Plato or Hegel to soak – that is, transfer it to my memory in the morning and take it with me to my work. During the jostlings of the day it usually works itself into clearness of meaning, so that when I look at it again at night and trace its connections, all obscurity has vanished.

B rokmeyer’s range of interests was broad, his studies omnivorous. But his thinking ultimately orbited one book, which stood as the sun of his intellectual cosmos: Hegel’s Science of Logic (1812-16). ‘It was his one Supreme Book,’ Snider writes in 1920 in his history of the St Louis movement, ‘his Bible; it meant to him more than any other human production.’

Interpreting and disseminating the teachings of this book, which remained at the time entirely unread in the Anglophone world, was Brokmeyer’s primary goal. ‘But it does seem to me,’ he writes in his Diary , ‘that if there is a theme in nature, art or science that ought to be popular, that ought to be thoroughly familiar to everybody, it is the one treated in this book.’ To this end, Brokmeyer prepared the first known translation of Hegel’s Logic into English, which was passed around, studied, and copied by members of the group; ‘the first duty of the Philosophical Society,’ according to Snider, was ‘to revise and pay for publishing this central work.’ But this publication was never carried out, and Brokmeyer’s translation has largely been lost to the vicissitudes of time. (Only the second book, the so-called ‘Doctrine of Essence’, survives, deep in the collections of Harvard’s Widener Library.)

Henry C Brokmeyer in 1866. Courtesy the State Historical Society of Missouri

William Torrey Harris, a teacher in a St Louis public school, was impressed by Brokmeyer and his command of Hegel’s philosophy. ‘Mr Brokmeyer,’ Harris writes in the preface of his monograph on Hegel’s Logic , ‘whose acquaintance I had made in 1858, is, and was even at that time, a thinker of the same order of mind as Hegel.’ The two had met after a lecture at the city’s Mechanic’s Library; soon after their meeting, Harris wrote in his diary that ‘perhaps the most important and pressing mission in America at the time was to make Hegel talk English.’ Harris would become the most prolific and respected scholar of the St Louis movement, serving for 26 years as editor of, and regular writer for, their flagship Journal of Speculative Philosophy . He held this position through a 12-year career as superintendent of the city’s public schools, where he rose as an internationally respected expert on pedagogy until being tapped by the US president Benjamin Harrison to become the United States Commissioner of Education. Harris continued in this role under the next three presidencies.

The St Louis movement’s influence is more readily seen in politics than in philosophy

‘The real work of the St Louis Movement,’ writes Snider, ‘was done individually, or in little groups and classes … Its life pulsed in the small coteries which met usually in parlours or private rooms for the study of some special book or subject.’ Membership was small – it never numbered more than 100 – but the participants were eager and dedicated. The day-to-day activity of the Society was guided by Harris’s steady hand; Brokmeyer supplied the spirit and the vision. The Society thought of itself as a university, a place from which to observe and strive for understanding of the entire scope of the natural and human worlds, but in an entirely unofficial sense: it maintained no affiliation with any college or university in St Louis or elsewhere. Members met at each other’s homes, at city libraries and at a building rented by the Society (located, at one point, in North St Louis on Salisbury Street). Younger members were typically pupils who studied with Harris for free; other members, ones closer to being philosophic equals, would share recent articles and discuss matters intellectual and literary.

But because of the unprofessional, unremunerative nature of their activity, members had to pursue other vocations to win their bread. Brokmeyer left the foundry for politics in 1866, and was eventually elected Lieutenant Governor of Missouri; Harris and others taught children in the city’s schools; Snider had come to St Louis as the movement’s only college-level educator, teaching Latin and English at Christian Brothers College. Harris and Brokmeyer’s entry into politics, and their ultimate departure from St Louis, would eventually result in the movement’s decline and dissolution; and aside from the Journal – the first such philosophical periodical on US soil, home to early works by Josiah Royce, William James , Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey , among others – they left very few artefacts behind by which to be remembered.

Indeed, the St Louis movement’s influence is more readily seen in politics than in philosophy. Brokmeyer was a delegate to Missouri’s fourth constitutional convention in 1875; the constitution ratified there mandated that ‘separate free public schools shalt be established for the education of children of African descent.’ One can see how support for such a position would follow from a Hegelian commitment to the rationality of political life, the universality of reason, and the universal need for the education of the natural human intellect toward its fulfilment in rational activity.

Harris decisively reshaped the US system of education during his three decades as Commissioner, restructuring US schooling on the German Bildung model and implementing the country’s first universal kindergarten programme. (The first US kindergarten was launched in St Louis by Susan Blow, a friend and regular interlocutor of the Society.) In a more eccentric vein, Harris also encouraged the federal government to introduce reindeer into Alaska, to provide alternative game for Indigenous whalers, and to ‘make the education of the Alaskans not only a book education, but an education in the arts of civilised life.’ But above all this, their primary legacy was the seriousness with which they approached the philosophic enterprise, and their refusal to consider philosophy as anything less than an absolutely necessary part of a complete human life.

F ounded in 1825 by New England Congregationalists of an enlightened, abolitionist persuasion, Jacksonville in Illinois quickly blossomed into a city of associations for education and reform. Literary clubs, feminist and antislavery groups, and philanthropic societies grew up alongside a collection of colleges and primary schools; Illinois College, the second institution of higher education established in the new state, conferred its first degree in 1835. This enthusiasm for association and education earned Jacksonville the nickname ‘the Athens of the West’. And the Virginia-born physician Hiram Kinnaird Jones was its Plato.

Jones founded the region’s first Plato Club in 1860 for the study, translation and elaboration of the dialogues of the Greek philosopher; others would soon appear in nearby Quincy, Decatur and Bloomington. (The Jacksonville club would later rename itself the American Akademe, in an effort to expand its scope and influence.) Educated in Classics, medicine and law at Illinois College, Jones quickly became one of the country’s most respected interpreters of Plato. In 1878, his fellow teacher and reformer Amos Bronson Alcott wrote:

I question whether one chair of philosophy in any of our colleges can deal as ably with pure metaphysics as our friend from the prairies of Illinois. We here in New England have listened to nothing concerning Plato comparable to his interpretations and statements of that supreme idealist.

But like his colleagues in St Louis, Jones was far from a narrow specialist. ‘Jones himself was a man of wide reading both in philosophy and literature,’ notes the historian Paul R Anderson in Platonism in the Midwest (1963). ‘[H]e was constantly associating ideas in Plato with similar ones in Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Spenser and others, and drawing parallels in Christian, Hindu, Persian and Chinese thought.’

Their object was the production of good human lives through a project of collective education and edification

Members of the Platonist school of Illinois came from a range of intellectual and religious backgrounds; no creedal or confessional orientation was necessary for joining, and members were free to interpret Plato and other philosophic texts in whichever direction they took them. They operated no less than three journals – The Platonist , Bibliotheca Platonica , and the Journal of the American Akademe – and at their final meeting in 1982, 433 of the town’s fewer than 20,000 residents had at one time been members.

The ultimate object of the group’s common effort was not the production of scholarship, but rather the production of good human lives through a project of collective education and edification. Jones held regular public lectures, and was famous for his ‘wonderful insight into Platonian philosophy’. But the primary form of group engagement was the seminar, in which members made contributions to a shared discussion guided by a common object of study – a dialogue of Plato, perhaps, or a work of Neoplatonic philosophy. Anderson records that:

One member easily burst forth with spontaneous intuitive insights whenever the spirit called her … One member flowered forth with pertinent bits of poetry whenever occasion permitted. Another had a ready streak of humor to lighten the discussion when it became too heated or involved. The group ranged in attitude from those who took their philosophy no more seriously than anything else to those who moved to Jacksonville for the very purpose of philosophical enlightenment.

Jones wrote one book on Plato, a commentary on the Laws. He was, with Harris and Amos Bronson Alcott, one of the founders of the Concord School in Massachusetts, where the thinkers of the Midwest would travel to debate the merits of Greek and German philosophy against New England Transcendentalism. The meetings between the supercilious New Englanders and the earnest, egalitarian Midwesterners were often comical, as the writer Louisa May Alcott (daughter of Amos) gleefully recounts in her diary:

I had a private laugh when Mrs ______ asked one of the newcomers [from the West], with her superior air, if she had ever looked into Plato. And the modest lady from Jacksonville answered, with a twinkle at me: ‘We have been reading Plato in Greek for the past six years.’ Mrs ______ subsided after that.

T he prairie schools of philosophy were not just local curiosities; over the course of their roughly three decades of existence, they exerted a lasting influence on US intellectual culture, however much they themselves have been forgotten. They encouraged the growth of similar philosophical societies from the Midwest to the Eastern seaboard, in places like Chicago, Philadelphia and Massachusetts; they established a model for small-group adult education, contrasted with, for instance, the popular Lyceum model of the large public lecture; and they rekindled an interest in the study of classical, Medieval and early modern philosophy and literature among US thinkers who, influenced by transcendentalism and pragmatism, were all too often focused on what was simply useful or new.

‘We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe,’ Ralph Waldo Emerson had bemoaned in his speech ‘The American Scholar’ (1837). The philosophers of the prairie had no such complaint with the minds of the Old World. In an editorial preface to the first issue of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy in 1867, William Torrey Harris wrote:

For after all, it is not ‘American thought ’ so much as American thinkers that we want … If this be the goal we aim at, it is evident that we can find no other means so well adapted to rid us of our own idiosyncrasies as the study of the greatest thinkers of all ages and times.

The prairie philosophers succeeded in cultivating a generation of such American thinkers, pulled from the ranks of workers and schoolteachers of the Midwest.

What example, then, do these schools provide for the enterprise of philosophy today? The first and most immediate takeaway is the reminder that philosophy has rarely been considered just one research discipline among others. The enterprise of philosophy, for both the Platonists and the Hegelians, remained first and foremost what it had been since its birth among the seers and sages of ancient Ionia and Italy: the love of wisdom, the dogged search for knowledge of the whole. The Platonists of Illinois ‘regarded philosophy as a necessary orientation for the whole business of human living,’ wrote Anderson, and for this Plato was the best guide; for the St Louis crowd, Hegel was ‘the last entire philosopher of the Great Entirety, inasmuch as the philosophers since Hegel are but piecemeals in comparison with his wholeness,’ according to Snider. This kind of philosophical activity could not have been secluded within department offices or academic conferences; it was coextensive with the very activity of being human, of putting one’s reason fully to work, and was thus necessary for living a good life.

The internet is like the US Midwest in the 19th century: a kind of Wild West frontier territory

In the past century or so, the market power and cultural influence of US colleges and universities has greatly increased, driven by the post-Second World War expansion of university education in the wake of the GI bill. As a consequence, the vibrant pluralism of the philosophic way of life has more or less flattened into a single option: that of the university scholar, whose credibility depends upon institutional affiliation. Before this radical transformation of US education, and the monopolisation of intellectual life by the university industry that followed in its wake, philosophy was understood to be – like all other pursuits of the mind and heart – a vocation with a professional expression, rather than the other way round. If philosophy in the US is to have any future, it will demand a return to this perennial picture of things, and ensure that communities dedicated to philosophising proliferate outside the walls of the academy, among groups of people other than just college teachers and undergraduates. It will demand, that is, a turn from thinking about education in terms of bloated, lumbering, hierarchical institutions like colleges and universities, to thinking in terms of that perennial feature of US public life that the political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville said ‘gathers the efforts of divergent minds in a cluster and drives them vigorously toward a single goal’: the association.

A few such projects have come to fruition in the past few years, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid development of virtual communication technology that followed in its wake. Indeed, one might understand the internet to be like the US Midwest in the 19th century: a kind of Wild West frontier territory drawing together readers and thinkers from all walks of life. The Catherine Project, led by the philosopher Zena Hitz at St John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland is one such initiative: their mission is to cultivate ‘communities of learning based on conversation and hospitality’ by hosting seminars and leading tutorials for learners from all walks of life, all free of charge. There are also what people in media and publishing sometimes call the ‘little magazines’, smaller-circulation journals dedicated to intellectual matters and cultural criticism; some of these have been building out opportunities for discussion and study among their readers. As it stands, however, the walls of the ivory tower remain high, and the institutional model reigns supreme.

At the end of Brokmeyer’s life, he travelled West to spend time among the Muskogee of Oklahoma, on the invitation of a former classmate from Kentucky. ‘As disciplinary philosophy grew in the hallowed halls of the Ivy League,’ writes John Kaag in ‘America’s Hands-On Hegelian’ (2016), ‘Brokmeyer spent his evenings with his native companions on the plains, teaching them to read – from Hegel’s Logic .’ Snider, too, recalls old Brokmeyer the wild man, made rugged and sharp from years out West: ‘I heard him explaining the deeper philosophy of deer-stalking in a pow-wow with some Creek Indians,’ he recalls; he is struck by ‘the massive grimace, the coppery tint, the wild eye of him.’

A fitting image, perhaps, for what philosophy itself might look like after its retreat from the ivory tower and return to the wilderness of everyday human life: a bit rough around the edges, perhaps, and a little wild in the eyes. Aristotle says that, in perceiving, the organ of perception receives the form of what is perceived and takes on its shape, ‘as wax is receptive of the design of a signet ring.’ If we wish to see reality in all its wildness, then, it’s only right that our own eyes become a little wild.

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So, as previously mentioned, I have been diagnosed with OCD and have had it for most of my life. This condition affects a lot of my academic achievements and makes everyday life more difficult and sometimes impossible. I was wondering if I should discuss this at all in my college applications or essays, given that it is relevant to my academic achievement and is a hardship that I face every day. Just for context, my weighted grade point average is a 3.75; I am a junior in IB, 2nd place in Policy Debate in Virginia; I am a gay, African-American male who was raised by a single mom for 10 years; and I got a 1240 on my PSAT last year. So what should be general approach be? Thanks

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