"You mean there is a name for it?" - high school student suffers obsessive-compulsive disorder

Nutrition Health Review, Wntr, 1991

The scene: A classroom in a high school.

The time: The class has been dismissed for lunch. The children have left the room.

Only one teenage boy remains in the back of the classroom, busily straightening his classmates' littered desks.

He is unaware that the teacher is still at her desk, curiously observing his furtive movements.

She startles him by asking, "Why aren't you out there with the others? Why are you touching other people's belongings?"

The youngster becomes flustered and embarrassed, struggling for an explanation. "I just like to see things in order. I like neatness," he mumbles apologetically.

"Do you act like this at home?" the teacher asks. "What do your parents think of your excessive concern with orderliness?"

For a moment the child seems speechless, and then a torrent breaks forth. "My parents think I have a mental problem. They say I wash too much and spend hours in the bathroom. They're horrified that I wash so much my fingers bleed. The family doctor says I am neurotic, that I need to see a psychiatrist, that I have pent-up hostilities. We're all confused by my behavior. I haven't told my parents half of what I do to get some relief of what goes on in my head. Maybe I have a special kind of craziness."

The teacher, a bright, discerning young woman, recently watched a television program that attempted to review a wide range of anxiety disorders. It was a poor attempt at explaining various disorders little understood by the medical profession and the public. One scene, however, made an impression she couldn't forget: a woman who was obsessed with repetitive washing rituals suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder, the narrator said.

"Has anyone ever said that you have a condition known as obsessive-compulsive disorder?" she asks her student. "There are several millions of people, children and adults, who have the symptoms you describe, and there may be relief from it."

The boy seems to hold his breath for a moment, and with a sigh of relief exclaims, "You mean there is a name for it? That I don't have devils in my brain?"

He remains silent, then, attempting to catch his breath again, says, "Then I'm not alone!"

The teacher, deeply moved by this painful drama, realizes she has witnessed the merciful lifting of an overwhelming weight from a soul in unbearable pain. He is not alone, and for hundreds of thousands like him who have suffered in silence, science may be able to provide a blessed relief.