As the prevalence of obsessive-compulsive disorder increases sharply, a Melbourne mother of three has written a candid memoir – hoping it helps others to a quicker diagnosis and relief.
It took 23 years for Penny Moodie to find an explanation for disturbing thoughts and repetitive behaviours that had plagued her since childhood, but had been treated purely as anxiety.
“By this stage, I’d been suffering for years and years without knowing [what it was], and reading this, everything just clicked into place. It was astonishing how cathartic it was.”Loading “I would worry that I would do something that would make everyone think I was a slut, or that I would damage my reputation,” Moodie said.“I would examine everything for hours a day. It [OCD] affected my relationships, but none of my friends would have known.”
OCD is not just about obsessive tidiness or maintaining order – as popular culture often depicts it – but can be something with far darker implications for those living with it.Australian Psychological Society president Dr Catriona Davis-McCabe said greater resources were needed to support the increasing number of people diagnosed with the “debilitating disorder”.
People with OCD usually require 18 to 20 sessions with a psychologist to address strategies including exposure and response prevention therapy – which Moodie has used and found very helpful.Dr Kelvin Shiu Fung Wong, a clinical psychologist and Swinburne University researcher, said OCD most often presented as “obsessional doubts”.“I think of the pandemic as a stressor on everyone’s life, and we know stress or traumatic events can often predict the occurrence of OCD,” Wong said.
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