effin-A... here comes The OCD Project!

The OCD Project Supertrailer

Dr. David Tolin will attempt to treat six patients with OCD in 21 days. Check out the premiere on Vh1 Thursday, May 27th at 10 et/pt!

I will watch and Tivo! Dr. Tolin is Brilliant -- nice work VH1.

I especially love the Fear Factor element… but I guess this is actually how Cognitive (active) Behavior Therapy actually works. Obsessive compulsive disorder is typically treated with this behavior therapy exposure, but with response prevention, like licking the bottom of your shoe, and then NOT running to the medicine cabinet for mouth wash.

Nadya... did OCD make you have those babies?

Hands down, for me, this is the most interesting thought the media echoed all week. Honestly, I have never thought of OCD in this context. I know Obsessive Compulsive Disorder can make suffers do things they really don't want to, do things they really don't feel good about doing, do things they really don't think are logical, but could it make a mom have more kids?

The obsessive logic here (or lack there of) might be simply obsessiveness about being a mother. The logic might be to have more babies to fill some kind or perceptive void in the mind. I don't think it has anything to do with counting or trying to hit a certain number. But could it? She did control the number of embryos?

Both of Nayda's parents are now publicly questioning her mental-health state. Of course Nadya's current actions may not be OCD actions at all, but may be relative to the cascade of flooding brain chemicals that can be brought on after giving birth to a child, or two, or even 8! In fact, hormone imbalance with respect to the levels of estrogen, progesterone, and cortisol in women can end up causing a state of postpartum psychosis; a serious mental disorder that can require medications or even being institutionalized.

Anyway... on NBC Today Nadya Suleman's mother, Angela, actually said that "...it seems as if she's obsessive compulsive and she needs to keep doing this and I hope she is not. I mean is 14 enough?". This quote happens about three minutes into the embedded video below.

OCD or not, I don't think a mental evaluation for Nadya would hurt anything at this point.

OCD Windex Carousel - what does OCD feels like?

Ever asked yourself "Do I have OCD"? If not, have you ever wondered what having obsessive compulsive disorder feels like?

Well, if you have to wonder then you are blessed to be free from the constant agonizing, intrusive thoughts that come standard with OCD. If you don't know how you can tell if you, your loved one or your child have obsessive compulsive disorder, then maybe I can help with the following content.

A few symbolic points to my example are:

• As far as I know, the thoughts and compulsions never go away
• The obsessiveness may change from one form to another (e.g. cleaning to checking to counting) but always exists. Its like trying to fill a bottomless pit
• Some moments the thought patterns will be less intrusive and less intense than others
• Initial rituals or compulsive acts are exhaustively completed before moving on to another act. Even if the second act is a normal everyday occurrence like getting out of bed
  
• Obsessive compulsive disorder wastes extraordinary amounts of time, but the sufferer cannot move on (with comfort and ease of mind) until the ritual is complete - no matter how illogical the actions may be

For example, try to focus on one Windex bottle as they spin. Then count it as it goes around 5 times. And, by the way, do not move on and read the rest of the post until you are done.

You can move your cursor over the bottles to increase the speed and the complication of the counting.


Now times this feeling by 100 and do it every day! Welcome to the world of a typical OCD suffer.

The above example tries to demonstrate how mentally exhausting dealing with just one "C" of the (4) notorious C(s) of this disorder can be: counting.

The four C(s) of OCD are Cleaning, Counting, Checking and Canceling. Even though you may think it is nonsense and a waste of time to count the single bottle as it spins around, you have to do it before you can move on. You have to do it because your mind tells you that you must!

Once I asked a psychiatrist which out of all the metal disorders, in her opinion, would be the worst to have and live with... you guessed it, she said obsessive compulsive disorder. Her main reasoning was that it just never stops. OCD is always gnawing at the brain. Also, that the sufferer is conscious and perfectly aware of the behaviors he or she is doing unlike some of the other painful metal disorders like bi-polar, schizophrenia and manic depression.

Without the functional healthy balance of Serotonin in the brain, easy-to-do normal everyday happenings like reading a page of text in normal order become enormous time consuming tasks.

In my fine artwork I try to represent this dichotomy of simplicity in everyday normality with the painful complications the unbalanced mind can manufacture.

Mental illness can help create great art, no?

Psychological disorders are important to the content of my art. I say that these same disorders or mental illnesses, that I use as concepts, actually have helped artists in the past create successful fine art.

So I ask these two questions as illustrative examples:

1. Would Vincent Van Gogh be as famous as he is without a cloud of psychological disorders surrounding his life?
2. Would Pablo Picasso's 'blue period' painting - The Old Guitarist - be as interesting as it in fact is if it were not painted when Picasso was "blue" with depression?
   

The extra-ordinary states of the mind of someone who suffers from OCD, depression, bipolar disorder, etc., may have something to do with the extraordinary paintings, prints and drawings that come from the artists that suffer from them. It's not to say that artists with normal mental thoughts cannot produce arts of wonder... it is to say that many, many artworks from the past and present have been created by people who are not in a normal state of mind. Very successful, very highly valued fine art has been done by artists that suffer from mental incapacitation. It may be the disorder that creates a neurotic passion that in turn, in addition to talent of course, affords the art. And it may be as a result of these mental disorder that these extremely great works happen at all.

When one looks at the world through the glasses of the mentally ill... things look different! So to say that when someone like Van Gogh self chastises himself by sleeping on the hard wood floor instead of the empty bed next to him (because of thoughts of other human beings in the world not having a bed) potentially hinges the state of the mind to a higher, more romantic level that can see views, perspectives, textures and colors that normal everyday states of mind can not.

I've often found it interesting how many of the great artists and fine artists from the past have been associated with some form of mental illness. Two examples for this post are: Vincent Willem van Gogh - any number of his pieces; and Pablo Picasso - specifically his Blue Period.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Gogh
"Van Gogh cut off the lobe of his left ear during some sort of seizure on 24 December 1888. Mental problems afflicted him, particularly in the last few years of his life...There has been much debate over the years as to the source of Van Gogh's mental illness and its effect on his work. Over 150 psychiatrists have attempted to label his illness, and some 30 different diagnoses have been suggested. Diagnoses which have been put forward include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, syphilis, poisoning from swallowed paints, temporal lobe epilepsy and acute intermittent porphyria. Any of these could have been the culprit and been aggravated by malnutrition, overwork, insomnia, and a fondness for alcohol, and absinthe in particular."

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasso's_Blue_Period
"The Old Guitarist is a painting by Pablo Picasso, painted in 1903, just after the suicide death of Picasso's close friend, Casagemas."

Let's think about these artists/artworks for a moment.

Now think about what these artworks would have looked like if these respective artists were on an SSRI (Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) or other class of antidepressants. Would the artists/artworks be as interesting or successful if they had been dulled by a brain balancing chemical like Zoloft. What would the art look like without the contribution of the disorderly, unbalanced mental state at the time of creation? Without these mental attributions, would these pieces even be worth blogging about?