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Essay on Far Beyond Everyday Superstitions

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Far Beyond Everyday Superstitions

Each day my grandfather has an impulse to touch his shoulder, then his nose, and after these actions are accomplished he touches his ear. He does these actions each and every time he says hello to a human being. It is as if he is a coach on the third-base line signaling a runner to steal home. He doesn’t know why he does these actions; he just does. He has on obvious reason and trys not to do them, but each time they come back. My grandfather feels ashamed of his actions and does not want anyone to know of them. He has other impulses as well. He turns off light switches with his thumb, only his thumb. My grandfather was diagnosed with the Obsessive-Compulsive disorder twenty years ago.

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Americans need to become more aware of how it effects ones life, due to the surprisingly high number of people that have symptoms of it.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is seemed to be an inherited condition. Family combinations are very common. Such as: a daughter inheriting it from her mother, daughter from her father, and mother and son. Father-son combinations are most common (Dumont, 143). These combinations may share the same OCD or an entire different one, cases vary. It may appear at the same age or at a different one, again cases differ.

The Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is hard to diagnosis. On average, people with OCD see three to four doctors and spend over 9 years seeking treatment before they receive a correct diagnosis. Studies have also found that it takes an average of 17 years from the time OCD begins for people to obtain appropriate treatment. (11/28, http://www.ocfoundation.org/ocf1010a.html). Since OCD is hard to diagnosis treatment is trial and error, or based on past patients.

Many humans have superstitions, so how can one know what is only a superstition or a serious disorder? Psychologists are still wary about the biological "circuits" for this disorder. They believe a patient who has the disorder has lost one’s sense of truly knowing something. The loss of the "circuits" that control the sense of knowing and basic behaviors: safety, grooming, attack, etc. These "circuits" might not work for the victims of
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