Attitudes toward obsessive-compulsive disorders

Abstract

The findings suggest that attitudes to obsessive-compulsive problems are likely to be complex and that help-seeking influences may vary across the different subtypes of this disorder. The implications for people seeking help for obsessive-compulsive problems are pointed out.

Which clinical and demographic factors predict poor insight in individuals with obsessions and/or compulsions?

“…While successful in achieving a relatively large study size, the final sample of 94 presumably reflects a low response rate. This could be due to the lengthy nature of the questionnaires involved, the need for good literacy skills and a good understanding of English (due to self-administration), and/or to the oppressive stigma that still surrounds OCD (Simonds & Thorpe, 2003). This creates the possibility of volunteer biases, in that those individuals who participated in the study might have possessed certain demographic or clinical characteristics (Petticrew & Roberts, 2006), thus potentially affecting results and generalizability.…”

Impact of a brief education about mental illness on stigma of OCD and violent thoughts

“…Examination of extant research indicates that a common treatment-seeking barrier for individuals with OCD is the shame they experience from their symptoms and fear of discrimination (García-Soriano et al, 2014;Marques et al, 2010). In the example of violent obsessions, it may be particularly understandable why individuals would be nervous to disclose their thoughts -the public is poorly educated about this and other forms of OCD (Coles et al, 2013), and what little research has been conducted on evaluations of individuals with intrusive violent thoughts indicates individuals with such experiences are, indeed, evaluated negatively (Corcoran & Woody, 2008;Simonds & Thorpe, 2003). The present study provides evidence that even individuals who initially reject the possibility that someone's violent thoughts are due to OCD can determine, from a very brief education, that OCD is, indeed, a reasonable diagnosis for someone with these experiences.…”

“…Given the misunderstanding of taboo or violent thoughts and OCD in the general population and even among mental health professionals (e.g., Coles et al, 2013;Glazier et al, 2013), we thought it useful to compare someone with violent thoughts to a diagnosis well-documented to be frightening to the general public, Schizophrenia (Jorm et al, 2012). There is evidence that violent intrusive thoughts are perceived negatively (Simonds & Thorpe, 2003), so we were curious whether these negative attitudes could be modified with a brief education. OCD has been sadly omitted from the many studies that have compared stigma of Schizophrenia with the stigma of various other disorders (e.g., Speerforck et al, 2014), and this study was an attempt to fill that gap in the literature.…”

“…Interestingly, investigation of taboo thoughts specifically is minimal in the stigma literature. One study that used vignettes of three different types of presentations of OCD symptoms -a compulsive washer, a compulsive checker, or a person with violent thoughts found that the Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jocrd individual in the violent thoughts vignette was perceived in the most negative light (Simonds & Thorpe, 2003). Similarly, Corcoran and Woody, 2008 found, in a creative study using vignettes to determine perceptions of hypothetical individuals with various common themes of intrusive thoughts -blasphemous, sexual, and violent -that the individuals with violent intrusive thoughts were perceived most negatively.…”

Obsessive‐Compulsive Disorder: The Process of Parental Adaptation and Implications for Genetic Counseling

“…Accommodation represents a counter-therapeutic process that involves parents enabling children's avoidance of triggers and assisting in their rituals (Albert et al, 2010;Lebowitz, Panza, Su, & Bloch, 2012). Individuals with OCD and their relatives experience significant stigmatization associated with the disorder, and fear of this stigma often results in concealment of the illness and delayed help-seeking (Hansson, Jormfeldt, Svedberg, & Svensson, 2013;Simonds & Thorpe, 2003;Stengler-Wenzke, Trosbach, Dietrich, & Angermeyer, 2004b).…”