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concerning newspaper article

Phoenyx•

2 years ago•9 Replies

Hello wonderful OCD family!

I wanted to share with you a concerning and very disturbing (at least to me)article from The NY Post.

I’m utterly disgusted by the comparison they make between OCD and extremist behavior.

nypost.com/2023/02/04/ocd-i...

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Phoenyx

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9 Replies

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MothFir2 years ago

Well it is the New York Post... 🙂

Seriously, it is maddening to read and I understand your being concerned. I didn't delve too deeply into the comments, but at least the first few called it out as misinformation, which is encouraging.

I read the original research study, and the Post piece implies a lot of firm conclusions from what are only tentative hypotheses in the original (which uses a lot of phrases like "may exert an indirect influence" -- hardly convincing without further study). The study itself seems flawed, with participants self-identifying as having OCD based on their own completion of some YBOCS questions. Neither researcher is an OCD specialist, and I don't sense a thorough understanding of OCD in the paper. In fact, at times they seem to make the common mistake of confusing OCD and OCPD.

I have often wondered how much my OCD overlaps with my non-OCD obsessions, like wanting to complete a task before taking a break, or sacrificing comfort to reach a goal. It's an interesting area of study, but I don't think this paper sheds much light on the topic, and it's a shame that it conflates generic "obsessive" behavior with dysfunctional behavior. Plenty of "obsessive" behavior is arguably a net positive for society (all those "obsessive" artists, inventors, scientists, criminal investigators, peaceful activists, and on and on). Obsession itself is not the problem, and it often has nothing to do with clinical OCD anyway.

Phoenyx• in reply toMothFir2 years ago

Yes. I agree with everything you said. Yes, I was happy to read the comments, too :).

Sallyskins2 years ago

I read the article from your link and thought it irresponsible and just plain wrong. It's bad reporting and as the above reply to your post points out, it's based on flawed research, including accepting self-diagnosis.

There are so many misunderstandings around OCD - it annoys me when people say 'I'm a little bit OCD' meaning they're neat and tidy and don't like mess.

There's no real understanding of OCD in this very flawed article - the fact remains that the vast majority of people with OCD go out of their way to avoid causing harm to anyone else and take it to absurd lengths. Some therapists have actually said that people with the sort of OCD that makes them afraid of harming children are perhaps the safest people to be around children - they are so afraid of causing harm that they would do just about anything to avoid it. (Sorry for the long-winded sentence.) The point is that they don't want to harm anyone, let alone a child - it's the OCD that makes them afraid they might do it.

Having an obsession does not on its own constitute OCD. This article conflates the two. Certain types of personality may be vulnerable to being sucked into cults - often people with a very tenuous hold on their own sense of self - but that's nothing to do with OCD.