Howie Mandel and OCD

I was looking for some "real people" and not dramatizations of mental illness and ran across this about comedian/host Howie Mandel and his battle with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

As an aside, in class, I avoid dramatizations and prefer to use documentaries.  To me, that creates a more realistic and accurate picture of the complexities of the disorders rather than one actor's interpretation.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSZNnz9SM4g

This link will take you to other interviews with Howie Mandel:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=howie+mandel+ocd&oq=howie+mand&gs_l=youtube-reduced.3.3.0l4.105358.107484.0.109541.10.5.0.5.5.0.85.324.5.5.0...0.0...1ac.1.6hDJ4d0UCfw



posted by Chuck Schallhorn

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ABC Nightline Segment on OCD

On 02/15/2010, ABC's Nightline did a short (8:56) segment entitled "The Dirty Work of Keeping Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in Check" by John Donvan and Steven Baker.

The video clip and website, which can be found at http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/ocd-recovery-program/story?id=9822908, includes various aspects of OCD and its therapy

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What You Need to Know about OCD

International OCD Foundation had developed a 24 page brochure entitled "What You Need to Know About Obsessive Compulsive Disorder". The information can be downloaded as a PDF file or viewed online.

The brochure can be found at http://www.ocfoundation.org/uploadedFiles/WhatYouNeed_09.pdf and the homepage for the International OCD Foundation is at http://www.ocfoundation.org/

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OCD Online Screening Quiz

Dr Grohol's PsychCentral includes a twenty question online Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder quiz. After answering the questions, participants are given a score of the likelihood of them having OCD.

While the quiz is not meant to be a diagnostic tool, it can give students a good perspective of OCD. The OCD online quiz can be found at http://psychcentral.com/ocdquiz.htm

The homepage for PsychCentral is at http://psychcentral.com/

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Fascinating Television Dealing with Anxiety Disorders

Apparently, when A&E television created its new season of shows, they must have liked the response from Intervention. So now there are at least two shows dealing with psychological disorders, Obsessed and Hoarders. You can watch the episodes online in addition to recording them. While I have not yet seen an entire episode of Obsessed, I viewed portions of the descriptions and early cognitive behavioral therapeutic interventions. What I saw was a good representation of the anxiety shown by those who suffer from the disorder. The web site indicates that the series deals with the most severe anxiety disorders (from which there are more than 3 million Americans suffering).

In Hoarders, two people are typically viewed back and forth in their situation, their own point of view of their behavior, and the beginning of potential change. Some people have therapists helping them through, some have professional organizers. A repeated emphasis is how potentially dire the situation is regarding living circumstances (many threats of eviction and child removal). The anguish is clear on the faces of those undergoing the changes needed to create less clutter in their lives. What is not always clear is the underlying factors that led to the creation.

My view is that the portions of the shows I have seen are excellent for illustrating what these disorders look like. I've not seen enough to comment on the therapeutic value shown.

Intervention is on Mondays at 9/8C
Hoarders is on Monday nights at 10/9C
Check listings for Obsessed

As with all shows now, there is much in the way of web-only content for more details.

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Psych in the news

In an op-ed column on race, Charles Blow focuses on Harvard's Implicit Association Test and the findings that most whites "harbor a hidden bias" against blacks. Direct links to the tests are here ... and here's a 2006 column (and follow-up blog post) by John Tierney presenting the evidence against the IAT. (All from the NY Times)

A new paper in the Journal of Social Issues shows that multiracial adolescents who identify proudly as multiracial fare as well as — and, in many cases, better than — kids who identify with a single group, even if that group is considered high-status (like, say, Asians or whites). (Time)

Newsweek traces the history of the alleged autism-vaccination link in its Anatomy of a Scare.

Researchers found in a small study of 30 young iPod users that teens not only tend to play their music louder than adults but, often, are unaware of how loud they're playing it, and are thus unaware of their risk of subsequent hearing loss. (Time)

The FDA approves deep brain stimulation as a treatment for OCD. (Chicago Tribune)

And finally, this is just sad. Not only did research show the men view bikini-clad women as objects (based on 21 Princeton boys as subjects) but no one has actually bothered to see if the same is true in reverse ("women may also depersonalize men in certain situations, but published research on the subject has not been done"). Sigh. (CNN)

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