Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - Worries, doubts, superstitious beliefs all are common in everyday life. However, when they become so excessive such as hours of hand washing, or when you do things that make no sense at all, such as driving around and around the block to keep checking to just make sure that an accident didn't occur, then a diagnosis of OCD may be made. In OCD, it's as if the brain gets stuck on a particular thought or urge and you just can't let it go. People with OCD often say the symptoms feel like a case of mental hiccups that won't go away. OCD is a medical brain disorder that causes problems in information processing. It's not your fault, nor the result of a "weak" or unstable personality.

Before the arrival of modern medications and cognitive behavior therapy, OCD was generally thought of as being untreatable. Most people with OCD continued to suffer, despite years of ineffective psychotherapy. Today, luckily, proper treatment can help most people with OCD. Although OCD is usually completely curable only in some individuals, most people achieve meaningful and long-term symptom relief with comprehensive treatment.

OCD symptoms cause distress, take up a lot of time (more than an hour a day), or significantly interfere with the person's work, social life, or relationships.
Most individuals with OCD recognize at some point that their obsessions are coming from within their own minds, and are not just excessive worries about real problems, and that the compulsions they perform are excessive or unreasonable. When someone with OCD does not recognize that his or her beliefs and actions are unreasonable, this is called OCD with poor insight.

OCD symptoms tend to wax and wane over time. Some symptoms may be little more than background noise; others may produce extremely severe distress.