Reports of OCD tripling due to 'less stigma'
A Wiltshire psychologist says there is less stigma with OCD
According to a recent report, OCD has tripled in under 25s in recent years and a Wiltshire psychologist said it is due to "less stigma".
The NHS define OCD as: obsessive compulsive disorder, a mental health condition where a person has obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours.
OCD can affect men, women and children. People can start having symptoms from as early as 6 years old, but it often begins around puberty and early adulthood.
OCD can be distressing and significantly interfere with your life, but treatment can help you keep it under control.
Doctor Lynda Parnham, a Wiltshire based psychologist said: "It may well be not that OCD in and of itself is tripling, but the reporting of it is tripling.
"I think there's a lot of reasons we can look at as to why that's happening. So I think what we're finding is we're much more aware of it rather than necessarily there's more of it and there's lots of really good reasons why we're more aware of it now.
"So generally, there's an awful lot less stigma and an awful lot more talking about OCD. That's where there are, as well as other anxiety disorders and mood disorders people take to social media a lot more to talk about these issues.
"Public figures will often talk about their difficulties with things like OCD."
Lynda also talks about OCD being a part of the anxiety spectrum and that it comes from a source of fear.
She continued: "What's very interesting for me as a psychologist, nearly always when I meet somebody with obsessive compulsive disorder, I'll go back and talk about when is the first time you remember feeling this or when is the first time you remember doing this when we look at the compulsion end of it.
"And nearly always at that time in the persons life, there was some sense of lack of safety, some sense of chaos, some sense of lack of psychological safety, some sense of trauma. And very often these rituals or compulsions will arise out of a very sensible wish to make."