Anxiety disorders, like most mental disorders, involve multiple causes including genetic, biological, social, and learning. And successful treatments sometimes target psychological or biological systems. Nevertheless, it is useful to consider that for most people with ...

Parents of children with OCD or symptoms of OCD want to help their kids get the best and most effective treatments. There are many options with many different names. For example in the treatment of ...

Lots of young children have OCD like symptoms that never develop into the disorder. For example, we have two grand-babies under the age of two. One of our granddaughters, Alaina, comes over to our house ...

Many people have trouble throwing things away. Actually, to a degree that's me! But, most of us aren’t considered true hoarders. Hoarders are people who collect huge (and I mean huge) quantities of useless junk and refuse to part with it even when it gets in the way of living in the home. Hoarders often have stacks of stuff on appliances and stairways and desks and floors. It gets so bad that their homes turn into fire hazards, become infested with insects, and pose increased risk of falls. In fact, the appliances in the homes of most hoarders no longer function properly because calling a repair person could result in the hoarder being turned into the Public Health Department. Hoarding currently is considered a type of OCD, but experts debate whether Hoarding quite fits under the OCD umbrella. So, you just might see Hoarding recategorized in the next version of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). Some of the reasons that Hoarding OCD may not be true OCD include: Unlike most people with OCD, the majority of hoarders do not want help. This fact also happens to make them much more difficult to treat. Medication doesn't work with Hoarding OCD nearly as well as it does for other types of OCD. People with Hoarding OCD seem to have certain cognitive deficits (like the ability to categorize and make decisions) that are not shared by people with other types of OCD. Hoarding OCD treatment typically takes much longer than other types of OCD treatment. Hoarding OCD is more prone to relapse than other types of OCD. Click through on the video screen below to see a good example of what Hoarding OCD can look like. If you watch this video, you can also see why many hoarders never marry. Those that do often end up divorced because of the effects hoarding has on marriages. If you know someone who is a hoarder and actually wants to change, there's a great book on OCD hoarding written by Gail Steketee, Ph.D. and Randy Frost, Ph.D. We highly recommend it. This book can also be used in conjunction with treatment that's ordered by the courts (all too often what happens for hoarders).

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is the most common form of anxiety affecting more people around the world than any other type of anxiety. People with GAD report a mix of symptoms--physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts. Physical ...

WARNING: Seriously, if you truly get bothered by songs that run through your head over and over again, you probably don't want to read the rest of this blog. “It’s a small world after all, it’s ...

Reuters recently reported on a survey of over 1,000 adults who are currently employed. About one in five of them reported that the economy has impacted their mental health negatively. And a third or more ...

Yesterday, Chuck wrote about germs and resistance. Since contamination OCD is the most common subtype, here's a great study that adds a little more to his thoughts about germs. Scientists at the Columbia University in New York City ...

The following is based in part on an excerpt from our book Obsessive Compulsive Disorder For Dummies. We’ve added a little discussion as well. It illustrates that OCD and so-called "normal" can be a ...

Do you think that you have an anxiety disorder or OCD? We don’t recommend self diagnosis. If you think you have a problem, then please talk to ...