From Part 1:

Mental illnesses are complex, and are extremely variable in their presentation. In a woman, depression often comes out as tearfulness. In a man, the same depression might cause uncontrollable anger. To aid in the diagnosis of mental illness, physicians and mental health professionals rely on patterns, or rules-of-thumb, to aid their clinical skills. People tend to fall into patterns, or groups, though this isn’t always the case. The following describes four common subgroups of OCD, but rest assured these descriptions will not perfectly capture everyone suffering from the illness.

Part 2

Numeracy and Symmetry

Have you ever seen a kid walking in the mall (sorry Gen Z), jumping from small blue tile to small blue tile?

“Avoid the lava!”

“Watch out for the monsters!”

This is a completely normal behaviour, and many children, including myself, dabble a little in the lava-tile game.

But imagine if to you, it meant a little more. Imagine that your found yourself unable to walk on white tiles, because of a crippling sense of anxiety that if you did, something bad would happen. You would probably know this doesn’t make much sense, which only adds to the madness.

It wouldn’t be easy going to the mall.

This type of behaviour, in it’s extreme form, falls under the umbrella of a symmetry/numeracy based obsession. In this type of OCD, the obsessional thought is usually something along the lines of, “if this isn’t this way, than something bad will happen.” There may or may not be a specific type of “bad”-consequence perceived. Some examples;

***

An eight year old boy goes through the home and makes sure every single TV and computer has the volume set on an even number. His father has the TV on 15 one day, and the child gets very upset and throws a temper tantrum when his father doesn’t let him change it. The next day, his mother asks him what happened. The boy responds, “if the numbers are odd numbers, I’ll die.”

A twenty four year old woman is late for work every day. She’s eventually fired from her job, and ends up in a doctor’s office while she is off of work. “I think I need help doctor.” “OK. You’re in the right place. What do you think is going on?” “Every time I look in a mirror, I can’t leave until I catch my nose at the perfect angle, perfectly symmetric. I don’t know why, I just can’t. Some days it takes up eight or more hours.”

A fifteen year old is teased at school for his quirky behaviour. He doesn’t tell his parents why, and they only know that he is being bullied. One day, when dad is picking the boy up from school, dad notices the boy jumping from dark tile to dark tile on the sidewalk. “What was that about?” dad asks when the boy gets in the car. The boy blushes and says, “can we just go?”

***

These are real examples of OCD at it’s strongest. Fortunately, most of the people in the above example recovered reasonably well. Why share this? OCD remains one of the most under-recognized mental illnesses, and hopefully this helps dispel some of the myths.

Editor’s note: Read about what OCD isn’t!

Stay tuned for OCD – What to do about it, and the remainder of the, “four kinds,” series.

Dr. Travis Barron is a resident physician in Toronto, Canada.