NIMHANS to hold 3-day symposium on OCD from November 11

In a statement released Thursday, NIMHANS said, “The OCD clinic is a specialised clinic for the assessment and treatment of OCD patients. This is the largest out-patient clinic facility for the treatment of OCD patients in India. OCD is a form of severe mental illness which is characterised by obsessions and compulsions. Obsession manifests as repetitive thoughts or images that most patients experience as senseless or excessive. The distress is so excessive that those who suffer often have to resort to compulsions to control their distress. Compulsions are repetitive acts that an individual is driven to carry out in response to obsessions.”

Dr Anish V Cherian, associate professor of psychiatric social work and consultant, NIMHANS, OCD Clinic said, “OCD symptoms can be widely varying. Amongst the most commonly reported are of people who spend many hours cleaning themselves or their belongings and report experiencing repetitive thoughts of being contaminated or unclean. Other common obsessions are excessive doubts, excessive fears of harming self or others, need for things to be in particular order etc. People experiencing this resort to repeated checking, seeking numerous reassurances, excessive praying, arranging and rearranging, etc. OCD is relatively common, however, most people are not aware of their symptoms or suffer from shame because of their symptoms and fail to seek treatment.”

In its statement NIMHANS said that the OCD clinic also provides treatment to disorders related to OCD, like Body Dysmorphic Disorder (excessive pre-occupation with appearance), Trichotillomania (repetitive hair pulling), repetitive skin picking, and Hoarding disorder (excessively collecting and not being able to discard unwanted items).

“The specialty OCD clinic provides out-patient services every Tuesday. The unit has expertise in providing neurosurgical interventions like deep brain stimulation for patients who are not improving with all other treatments. In the last 25 years, around 50,000 patients are estimated to have been treated in the out-patients services, with around 7,000 patients having received in-patient input,” NIMHANS said.

An exhibition is also being organised at the Heritage Museum at NIMHANS on ‘Expressions of OCD’. The exhibition represents selected entries of a nationwide competition in painting, poetry, photography and short-films which reflects creative thoughts, emotions and intuitions on obsessive compulsive disorders, the institute said.