Homeopathic Treatment for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Author: Dr. Jakir Hossain Laskar, PhD

What is OCD?

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a psychiatric illness which causes repeated unwanted obsessive recurring thoughts and sensations, along with the compulsive behavior to urge to do something time and again. Severe anxiety and significant mental distress are the key features in OCD. A person with OCD may experience intrusive thoughts with a wide range of psychotic functional impairments.

Types of OCD?

1. OCD of Mental Contamination and cleanliness: Patients feel mental contamination along with a fear of things that might be dirty or a compulsion to clean.
2. OCD of Checking for safety: Patients repeatedly check door-locks, alarm systems, ovens, or light switches, etc. They are having irrational fears about safety.
3. OCD of Ruminations and intrusive thoughts: Patients may experience an obsession with a special line of vulgar thought.
4. OCD of Hoarding: Patients find it impossible to dispose of anything. Old newspapers, clothes, mails, and other objects are collected for no apparent reason.
5. OCD of Symmetry and ordering: Patients prefer to have the need to keep things lined up in a specific way. They are obsessed with symmetry and order as they rearrange books, cutlery, or aligning carpets, pillows and cushions, repeatedly to relieve their anxiety.

Signs and symptoms of OCD?

1. Repetitive thoughts and intrusive thoughts which patients do not able to control. They want to do things in ‘just right’ way with some uncontrollable disturbing feelings, such as fear, disgust, doubt, etc.
2. Patients spend an unwarranted amount of time on obsessions, which badly interferes with personal, socio-cultural, and professional activities.
3. Unwanted sexual thoughts, perfectionism including concerns about exactness, religious obsessions, contamination including germs and dirt, washing mania, mental compulsions including praying to prevent harm, fear of being contaminated by touching objects others have touched, are red-line symptoms of OCD.

Causes of OCD?

1. As a genetic factor OCD may sometimes be inherited from the parent.
2. Chemical imbalance of serotonin and glutamate in the brain because of neuro-biological impairment may cause OCD. 
3.  Major life situation changes and severe trauma may also be the etiology.
4. Because of a streptococcal infection in children due to inflammation and dysfunction in the basal ganglia, some rapid-onset cases of OCD may occur as autoimmune cause, which is called as pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections (PANDAS).
5. Risk factors of OCD include intense stress, severe anxiety and major depression.

Management of OCD?

1. Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), 2. Meditation and Relaxation practice, 3. Neuro-modulation with transcranial magnetic stimulation, are used as management procedures.

Homeopathic Treatment of OCD?

Along with OCD, I have seen, many patients are fearful and nervous and have impulse to jump out of window, faintish and tremulous, having errors of perception and they want to do things in a hurry with peculiar mental impulses. The remedy in those cases I selected is Argentum Nitricum higher potencies. When I got OCD patients with alternating moods, very irritable, full of fear and imaginations, never want to be left alone and obstinate and hypersensitive to pain, noise and touch, I preferred to prescribe Kali Carbonicum higher dilutions. I got great result using Stannam Metalicum 200 as complementary medicine after 2-3 months of treatment. Some OCD patients are apathetic, feels as if going insane or being paralyzed, fears the night, and the suffering from exhaustion on awakening, hopeless, despairs of recovery. And also when they are having loss of memory and remember everything previous to his illness, I consider Syphilinum 10M or 50 M to start with for controlling obsession and compulsions. For therapeutic use, I have been giving Apocynum Cannabinum Q (Mother Tincture), Serum Anguillae 7x and Rhamnus California Q, and Lithium Benzoicum 3x (Trituration), Ammonium Valerianicum 8x for symptomatic relief. Most of the OCD patients are cured by homeopathic medicines; rest can be managed to some extent. But none of these homeopathic medicines for OCD should be taken without professional advice from a consultant Homeopath in Neuro-Psychiatry.

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