Prof. David Veale (OCD)
David is a Consultant Psychiatrist in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy at the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust and Nightingale Hospital, London. He specialises in obsessive compulsiv...
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How long have you been studying OCD?
I've been studying or interested in OCD for about 40 years.
What does OCD stand for?
OCD stands for Obsessive compulsive Disorder. So obsessive means that you have obsessions. Compulsive means that you may have compulsions, and disorder means it is something that's thought to be sufficiently time consuming, distressing, and interfering in your life.
What is OCD?
So OCD consists of both obsessions and compulsions and usually avoidance behaviour as well. So obsessions are intrusive thoughts, doubts, images, urges, sensations. And these are usually around one of four sorts. So that could be, for example, contamination fears. It could be being responsible for causing some sort of harm or unacceptable thoughts. And lastly, issues to do with having things in order or feeling just so now, the other side of the coin is your compulsions. So compulsions are things you have to repeat over and over again in order to feel just right or feel comfortable in some way. And typical compulsions are things like handwashing and cleaning or checking things to make sure that no harm is going to occur, or seeking reassurance or having to neutralise and get rid of your intrusive thoughts in your head, or trying to put things just so in order to feel right. So these are all compulsions. And then the other side of the coin is, again, avoidance behaviour. So if for example, you've got fears of contamination, then you're going to want to avoid situations or activities that make you feel anxious and distressed. So particularly you might be avoiding touching toilet seats or touching door handles or objects and things that you think might be contaminated. And there are also other things like avoidances to try to have to do a compulsion. So you might get somebody else to check your doors for you so you don't have to do your checking as such. So it's usually obsessions, compulsions, and avoidance behaviour. These are the key issues in understanding obsessive compulsive disorder.