Following an email conversation with my tutor I have decided to look a little further in depth at unseen illness for this assignment, specifically OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) as being a (thankfully mild) sufferer, this is a subject I know something about. OCD is an illness which is often misrepresented though and is as such very much misunderstood. I often hear people state they are “a little OCD…” about something, usually to do with cleaning, or they’ll make statements to me such as “Oh, you have OCD? Your house must be spotless!”. I have even had someone tell me I couldn’t possibly have OCD because I don’t obsessively clean.
Leading on from this I had an idea to try and show some of the common misconceptions people have about the illness using photographs showing reality paired with captions stating the way people on the outside see OCD.
What I found when searching the internet for common misconceptions was far more in than I expected. I knew that it is generally thought that OCD is about cleanliness and order and that people think it is a good or useful illness to have but I discovered far more than that.
The main themes for misunderstanding that came up were those of cleanliness and quirkiness. Thanks to the portrayal of OCD in the media it is seen as a bit of a joke or an anally retentive trait which the sufferer does not realise they have (think Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory or the detective Monk, for example). It is also assumed that it will be obvious from the way a person behaves that they have OCD though in reality you are unlikely to be able to see most of their obsessive behaviours. Other causes are seen as stress, being weak willed and needing to relax, phobias, how people are brought up, being a woman and it just being a personality trait.
In actual fact it is a much different and far more complicated illness than is generally thought. Most OCD sufferers, for instance, will be well aware that they have this illness. It begins with intrusive thoughts – these can be violent or sexual thoughts, thoughts of hurting yourself or others (and fear that you will carry them out), fear of committing a sin, fear that someone you love will be hurt or become ill. Most people have intrusive thoughts at some time or another but can easily brush them aside and continue with their day but in someone with OCD these thoughts are more persistent and the sufferer will use rituals to protect themselves (or more often their loved ones) against whatever ‘bad thing’ they are fearful of. Sometimes these will be purely mental rituals but more often they will manifest as excessive cleaning (to fix the fear of making someone ill/getting ill themselves and passing it on), tapping or touching objects, arranging things the ‘right’ way and praying to name just a few.
Ideas
Themes I would like to photograph are as following:
- Cleanliness
- Orderliness (photo of disordered bookshelf?)
- Rare in children
- Media portrayal (Coronation Street have just shown us that a character has OCD but rather than being the usual quirky/anal retentive type he was clicking switches and checking things until they felt ‘right’ in order to protect someone he cared about from any more bad happenings. He was clearly distressed and also embarrassed about his behaviour – as most OCD sufferers would be).
- Untreatable
- Obvious
- Useful
- Funny (a friend gave me a fridge magnet making a joke out of OCD, what is sad is how close to truth it is)
Other things I could try to show are the compulsions themselves (see second spider chart above) though I feel these images would probably be much more literal than the images I’ve discussed above and would teach about the illness rather than show/debunk the misconceptions people have about it.
References
I read from several sources online to find out more information about OCD and the misconceptions people have about it. There is so much more to the illness than I have touched on above.
http://www.sciencefocus.com/article/mind/i-still-remember-day-my-brain-broke
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-truisms-wellness/201605/4-myths-about-ocd
https://www.everydayhealth.com/anxiety/8-common-myths-about-ocd.aspx
https://www.bcm.edu/news/psychiatry-and-behavior/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-misconceptions
Context & Narrative 