What causes obsessive-compulsive disorder?
As with some of the other anxiety disorders, it seems like something in memory or thought processing “gets stuck.” For example, with PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder), fragments of the memory of the traumatic event get stuck and replay in the person’s mind as flashbacks or nightmares. With OCD, people often feel that there is a broken record playing in their mind. The obsessive thoughts or images keep replaying. Performing the compulsive behavior provides some temporary relief of the anxiety caused by the distressing thoughts. OCD is partly genetic. I just read somewhere today that if one identical twin has OCD, there is only a 13% chance that the other twin will not have it. That’s a pretty strong genetic link!
