All those swine flu warnings have made a difference: People are washing their hands more, whipping out hand sanitizer and giving the evil-eye to coughers in their proximity.
But for people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, all the talk about germs has been ominous. People who treat those affected with OCD are seeing an uptick in those seeking help.
"We've gotten more calls this year — there is no doubt. And a large percentage of those callers talk about H1N1 contamination," says Ellen Sawyer, executive director of the education and support organization OCD Chicago.
Fugen Neziroglu, clinical director of the Bio-Behavioral Institute in Great Neck, N.Y., which treats people with OCD, says she's seeing an increase in contamination-related OCD due to the public mandates regarding hand-washing and coughing.
That's not to say the government's messages about swine flu are enough to trigger the disorder — at least for those who aren't normally nervous about contamination, says Maureen Whittal of the University of British Columbia Department of Psychiatry.
"However, for people who are vulnerable because they have either already some mild concerns about contamination or were previously treated for contamination related OCD but have residual fears, the messages of danger and the potential lethal consequences could be sufficient to trigger OCD," she says.
Some 2.2 million American adults over age 18 have OCD, according to the National Institutes of Health, and the first symptoms often begin during childhood or adolescence. While some might joke about a neat freak having OCD, the disorder goes far beyond that: Someone with OCD might wash their hands so often that they become cracked and bleed.
Sawyer says this is an exceedingly hard time to treat people with OCD: "It almost seems like most of the American public is doing all the things that people with OCD aren't supposed to do."
Whittal works with patients to set up goals.
"What we've been telling our patients is to follow the guidelines regarding hand-washing or use of antibacterials but no more — i.e., don't do more than what is recommended. We would also talk to people about the realistic percentages of becoming seriously ill and or dying from H1N1," she says. "The worst-case-scenario thinking is extremely unlikely. We might compare and contrast the probability of dying from H1N1 to, say, dying in a motor vehicle accident."
For people with OCD, Sawyer calls the publicity about H1N1 a "disaster."
"These are people who had enough to deal with when all the commercials for antibacterial soap started appearing a few years ago," she says.
If you suspect that your obsession with germs have gone too far, there are self-screening tests for OCD on many medical Web sites including www.ocdchicago.org
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