Psychology Essay: Obsessive-Compulsive and Trauma-Related Disorders

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a psychiatric disorder in which people get unwanted thoughts, feelings, and obsessions or may have behaviors that drive them to do something which is referred as compulsions. The individuals with obsessive compulsive disorder perform the actions so as to get rid of the temporary thoughts and failing to do the obsessive things causes anxiety (Davison & Neale, 2001). The trauma-related disorder is a physiological distress that results due to experience in a stressful event. The physiological distress appears again in the form of disturbing thoughts such as flashbacks and nightmares which are original things that happened during the traumatic event. The symptoms of traumatic related disorders include; recurrence of an unavoidable event, Hyper arousal and emotional numbing.

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Epidemiology

The obsessive-compulsive disorder in adults has an estimation; one-year prevalence is 1.2% and the estimated lifetime prevalence is 2.3%. Many children that are affected by the Obsessive compulsive disorder are males while it affects females more in adulthood. Obsessive compulsive disorder normally starts in childhood or adolescence and slowly continues throughout an individual's life. The disease causes impairments in the functioning of the person because of its severe and chronic nature. The yearly prevalence rate for traumatic related disorders is approximately 3.5%. The prevalence rate for the Obsessive compulsive disorder is approximately 30% among people with the trauma-related disorder (Strange, 2005). Generally, the obsessive-compulsive and trauma related disorders affects females more than males in adulthood but during the childhood period the male children are more affected. Obstructive-compulsive disorders affects the adults more than children.

Obsession Symptoms

The OCD Obsessions are repetitive, and continuous unwanted urges and thoughts that are disturbing, and they cause discomfort and anxiety. The obsessions try to affect someone when they want to do other things. The symptoms of obsession include:

Phobia of getting contaminated by things that other people have touched

Excessive stress when things are not arranged the way they should be

Thoughts of behaving inappropriately, like harming others that are makes the individual very uncomfortable

Stressful about weird sexual images that keep on being repeated in the mind

Compulsion symptoms

The OCD compulsions are behaviors that happen regularly and the person feels has the drive to do them. The compulsions acts are meant to lower the anxiety being experienced, and they offer temporary relief. The symptoms include:

Cleaning-the individual may clean the hands repeatedly until they peel or washing the house things for a long time

Checking- the person keeps on checking and rechecking a lot of times if things have been done properly

Repeating- the individual may not be able to stop repeating a prayer or a phrase

Dissociative disorders

A dissociative disorder is an illness that included interruption or disturbance of an individual's ability to recall, their selfhood, awareness or understanding. Individuals who have dissociative disorders apply dissociation as a means of controlling the feeling but this process happens without their conscious thought.

Symptoms

Memory loss of particular people, events or a certain period

The individual feels like a stranger to themselves

The feeling like if their different people around them

Having a different character

Feeling confused about one's sexuality or gender

Have mental problems like depression, anxiety and thoughts of committing suicide

Somatic Symptom Disorder

Somatic symptom disorder is a mental condition that leads to one or more physical symptoms like pain and fatigue that causes emotional distress and a problem in the body functioning. People who have somatic symptom disorder have unusual feelings, thoughts and behaviors in response to the physical symptoms like pain (Davison & Neale, 2001). The discomfort that they experience from pain or fatigue is a real irrespective of whether the physical explanation is available or not available. The symptoms of Somatic Symptom Disorder include; feeling weak, pain and difficulties in breathing.

Disorders related to Somatic Symptom Disorder

Illness Anxiety Disorder is one of the disorders associated with Somatic symptom Disorder and it is a condition whereby the individual has a fear of having a serious disorder. Illness Anxiety disorder begins during childhood, and the individuals misinterpret the non-pathologic physical symptoms to having a severe disease. The symptoms that are present in individuals with illness anxiety disorder is that the individual is preoccupied with the thoughts that they might become sick and this interrupts their occupational functioning and may result in distress. They are also more concerned with the possible outcome of the symptoms other than the symptoms themselves. Some of the people with Somatic illness disorder tend to examine themselves many times and mostly get alarmed by somatic sensations (Davison & Neale, 2001).

Conversion disorder is a disorder whereby the affected individuals show emotional stress in a physical way. The conditions start from being a mental problem and changes to be a physical problem. The conversion disorder symptoms can occur immediately after a trauma or stressful event, and the symptoms affect mobility. Some of the motor symptoms of conversion disorder include; lack of balance, paralysis of the limb or the whole body, impaired speech, trouble when swallowing, and unconsciousness. The sensory symptoms of conversion disorder include; blurred vision, problems of hearing, loss of pain sensation.

Assessment techniques

Diagnostic interviews are one of the assessment techniques in psychological disorders. When assessing OCD in pediatrics, the use of diagnostic interviews is common especially in research studies. The use of diagnostic interviews in the evaluation of the obsessive compulsive and trauma related is necessary to assign diagnosis and get the differences from any other possible diagnoses. The diagnostic interviews assess the patients for the Obsessive-compulsory and trauma-related disorder by using particular questions to assess the symptoms. The structured interviews are also used to assess dissociative disorders using a Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule and structured clinical interview for Dissociative Disorders (Davison & Neale, 2001).

Clinician-rated Instruments are also used in assessment. Trained personnel uses clinician-rated Inventory to rate the cases of OCD impairment and distress compared to the ones they have seen. The obsessive-compulsive scale is used in an interview, and it measures the symptoms of OCD and how severe it was the week before. The scores for the obsessions, compulsions, and distress are deduced by the medical officer on the basis of the report given or the behavior observations made by the clinician. The Clinician-Administered Dissociative States Scale is employed in the assessment of dissociative disorders. A child or adolescent dissociative checklist is also utilized in the assessment where the clinician helps assess the level of dissociation. The scale of assessment of Somatic Symptoms (SASS), is used to evaluate the somatic difficulties (Davison & Neale, 2001).

Self -report Instruments is another technique used to assess the disorders. When assessing OCD and trauma-related disorder, the use self -report measure is essential because they can fill quickly and given to many people at once to save time. People feel okay when feeling the reports independently and this is important to avoid over reporting or underreporting of the symptoms. The dissociative experience scale and questionnaire of experiences of dissociation are given to the people who have a dissociative disorder for them to fill it and give precise information about what they experience. In dissociative disorder, other assessment instruments used include a multidimensional inventory of Dissociation, Adolescent Dissociative Experiences Scale, and Multiscale Dissociation Inventory.

The use of clinician-rated instruments in assessing the obsessive-compulsive and trauma-related disorders because the clinician has the chance to observe the behaviors of the people as well as listen to the report from either the parents or spouse. The cores made by the scale used can be used to conclude the severity of the Obsessive-compulsive and trauma related disorders. The use of Scale of assessment for Somatic symptoms is successful in assessing Somatic symptom disorders because the measurement of the symptoms is necessary to understand each person experiencing the disorder and helps in planning for the treatment. The SASS show the somatic symptoms because they contain the measurements. The use of the Structured Clinical Interview for Dissociative Disorders (SCID-D), is successful because it has helped in identifying early dissociative symptoms that this prevents many years of suffering. The SCID-D is a reliable and effective method to manage dissociative disorders.

Medication and psychological treatments of Obsessive-Compulsive and trauma related disorders.

Psychological therapy is the main psychological treatment for Obsessive compulsive and trauma-related disorders and is a cognitive behavioral therapy which involves the breakdown of the individual problems into different parts like physical feelings, thoughts, and other actions. The therapy is meant to encourage those people to face the fear allow the obsessive thoughts happen without disrupting them with the compulsive behaviors. Therapy treatment together with exercises performed at home along with the sessions is important. Medications are also used in the treatment of Obsessive-compulsive and trauma related disorders. If an individual is not assisted by the psychological therapy, medications such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are essential in improving the OCD symptoms by raising the serotonin levels in the brain.

Dissociative disorder treatment

Psychotherapies in treating dissociative disorder includes discussing the disorder and other medical issues with the mental professional. Psychotherapies include cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectal behavioral therapy (Davison & Neale, 2001). Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing also helps minimize the symptoms of the post-traumatic disorder, and the affected person is requested to move the eyes side by side by following the movement of the finger of the therapist and start remembering the traumatic event. Medications are also essential in treating dissociative disorder treatment. Medicines such as antidepressants are used to treat the condition.

Somatic Symptom Disorder treatment

Psychotherapy can assist the people with Somatic Symptom Disorder handle and manage the chronic physical discomfort that they often experience. The patients can learn different ways of stress management like relaxation technique. The cognitive behavioral therapy is helpful whereby the therapists educate the patients on how to know the thoughts and feelings that are as a result of the physical symptoms that they experience because of the disorder. With the help of Cognitive behavioral therapy, the affected individuals can learn how to reduce the frequent monitoring of sensations of the body. Medications such as antidepressants helps minimize the symptoms that are as a result of depression and pain that the patients who have somatic symptom disorder experience. In cases where one medication does not work, the doctor requests for a change in the medication or combining the drugs so that they can be effective and reduce the symptoms that arise due to Somatic symptom and related disorders. The anti...