40 Fun Facts About OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder)

Which actor won an Oscar for playing Melvin Udall, a novelist with OCD, in As Good as It Gets?

Jack Nicholson took Best Actor on the same night that his co-star Helen Hunt, playing a single mother, won Best Actress.

Which Deal or No Deal host with OCD offers contestants fist bumps instead of shaking their hands?

Howie Mandel called his memoir Here's the Deal: Don't Touch Me, and he has said that his shaved head is down to OCD, not baldness.

Which monsters does European folklore often give arithmomania, an OCD-like compulsion to count seeds?

Vampires and counting still go together on Sesame Street, where Count von Count is known for counting everything and anything.

Which former England football captain says his OCD makes him keep everything in a straight line or in pairs?

David Beckham's wife Victoria has said that even the family fridge is co-ordinated down either side.

Which billionaire, the subject of the film The Aviator, had OCD that showed as an intense fear of germs?

Howard Hughes was also fixated on minor flaws in clothing, friends recalled, and the film shows him growing more unstable as his OCD worsens.

Which activist, Time's Person of the Year for 2019, has been diagnosed with OCD and selective mutism?

Greta Thunberg has described her selective mutism as meaning that she only speaks when necessary.

Which actor won three Emmys as Adrian Monk, a San Francisco detective with OCD and many phobias?

Tony Shalhoub was nominated for the role eight years in a row, and the series itself collected eight Emmy Awards.

In 15th-century Europe, the blasphemous obsessive thoughts now linked to OCD were blamed on which cause?

Possession by the devil meant the usual cure was exorcism, though most sufferers reported only anxiety, religious fears and evil thoughts.

Which author of The Fault in Our Stars drew on his own OCD for the novel Turtles All the Way Down?

John Green gave his teenage heroine Aza Holmes a form of OCD that shows up as a fear of the human microbiome.

Which 18th-century dictionary writer, thought to have had OCD, performed rituals before crossing doorways?

Samuel Johnson also touched every post on the street as he walked past and would only step in the middle of paving stones.

SSRIs such as fluoxetine, the first-line medicines for OCD, are named after which brain chemical?

Serotonin helps to regulate emotions, mood, memory and sleep, and some people with OCD have low levels of it.

Wegner's thought-suppression experiment, often linked to OCD, asked people not to think of which animal?

A white bear proved hard to banish: volunteers rang a bell each time it came to mind, and the result led Wegner to his ironic process theory.

Sigmund Freud's patient Ernst Lanzer, whose illness would now be called OCD, is remembered by which nickname?

Rat Man was named for his most distressing intrusive thought, a torture involving rats that he feared would befall his father or a female friend.

Trichotillomania, which the DSM-5 groups with OCD, is a long-term urge that results in which behaviour?

Pulling out hair was filed under impulse-control disorders until the DSM-5 moved it into the same family as OCD.

Which Neil Simon comedy centres on Felix, a neat, uptight roommate said to show common symptoms of OCD?

The Odd Couple sets him against the slovenly, easygoing Oscar Madison, and after its 1965 Broadway premiere it became a film and a TV series.

Which US goalkeeper, who made 16 saves in one World Cup match, has both OCD and Tourette syndrome?

Tim Howard was diagnosed with both conditions when he was in the sixth grade, years before that World Cup night against Belgium.

Which musical TV series features Emma Pillsbury, a guidance counselor with OCD and a phobia of germs?

Glee cast Jayma Mays as Emma, and flashbacks trace the roots of the character's OCD back to when she was eight years old.

Clomipramine, an early OCD medicine, is also sold in the US as Clomicalm to calm which pets when left alone?

Dogs are the only animals the drug is licensed for in the US, where vets prescribe it to treat separation anxiety.

The PANDAS hypothesis links the sudden onset of OCD in some children to an infection with which bacteria?

Streptococcus is the suspect: antibodies made to fight it are speculated to attack the brain's basal ganglia, though the diagnosis is controversial.

Which first-line OCD therapy grew out of Vic Meyer's work with two hospital patients in the 1960s?

Exposure and response prevention had the two patients face situations that made them anxious while they were kept from performing any compulsions.

In which Ridley Scott film does Nicolas Cage play Roy Waller, a con artist with OCD and Tourette syndrome?

Matchstick Men gives Roy a ritual of opening and closing doors three times while counting aloud before he can walk through them.

Which host of the Nickelodeon game show Double Dare discovered at the age of 43 that he had OCD?

Marc Summers made the discovery in 1994 while co-hosting a show on Lifetime, the year after his run on Double Dare ended.

Which former member of the pop group Fifth Harmony wrote a 2020 magazine article about living with OCD?

Camila Cabello published the piece in WSJ Magazine to mark Mental Health Awareness Month.

Which English singer, who rose to fame with the hit single Budapest, has said he has the Pure O form of OCD?

George Ezra has Pure O, a form in which the obsessions and anxiety come with purely mental, not physical, compulsions.

Which punk rock band was co-founded and fronted by Joey, a New York singer diagnosed with OCD at 18?

Ramones frontman Joey was born Jeffrey Hyman in Queens, and he founded the band with Johnny and Dee Dee.

Which theologian, who sparked the Reformation with his Ninety-five Theses, is thought to have had religious OCD?

Martin Luther shares that reputation with the Catholic bishop Alphonsus Liguori, who is also thought to have suffered obsessive religious doubts.

Which author of The Pilgrim's Progress described his tormenting obsessions in the memoir Grace Abounding?

John Bunyan would mutter the same phrase over and over while rocking back and forth, long before OCD had been given a name.

Which founder of the Jesuits wrote in his memoirs of feeling that he had never completely confessed his sins?

Ignatius of Loyola kept doubting his confessions even after writing down what he needed to say, a pattern now thought to be a religious form of OCD.

Which form of OCD, whose name traces back to a Latin word for a stone, centres on moral or religious fears?

Scrupulosity can take the form of a fear of being an evil person, or of divine retribution for sin such as going to Hell.

The English term obsessive-compulsive began as a translation of Karl Westphal's word in which language?

German psychiatrist Westphal, who worked in Berlin, wrote of Zwangsvorstellung, and in 1871 he also coined the term agoraphobia.

Which behaviour, long treated as a symptom of OCD, became a separate diagnosis of its own in the DSM-5?

Hoarding earned its own entry because it can be told apart from OCD on clinical and brain-based measures, even though the two often occur together.

Which Parkinson's treatment gained a US humanitarian exemption in 2009 for use in treatment-resistant OCD?

Deep brain stimulation is kept as a last resort for OCD, although it does not require the destruction of any brain tissue.

Which term describes the personality disorder OCPD, whose traits, unlike OCD, feel correct to the person?

Egosyntonic traits are compatible with a person's self-image, whereas the thoughts of OCD clash with it, which is why they cause so much distress.

Which 9th-century Islamic polymath was likely the first person to classify OCD into different types?

Abu Zayd al-Balkhi described obsessions as annoying thoughts that are not real, and he suggested treating them with positive thoughts.

The word obsess comes from the Latin verb obsidere, to beset or occupy, whose root sedere means to do what?

Sit is the root: the Romans added the prefix ob to sedere to make obsidere, so to be obsessed is, at root, to be sat upon or beset.

Which star of The Blacklist and Boston Legal told Rolling Stone in 2014 that he has OCD?

James Spader won three Emmys as the attorney Alan Shore before spending a decade playing Raymond Reddington.

In which HBO series does Lena Dunham's Hannah relapse into the OCD symptoms of her youth in season two?

Girls was created by Dunham herself, who plays Hannah as an aspiring writer living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

What does the Y stand for in Y-BOCS, the standard scale that doctors use to rate the severity of OCD?

Yale is where lead designer Wayne Goodman founded an OCD clinic in 1985, four years before the scale appeared; the B is for Brown.

Which condition, placed beside OCD in the DSM-5, is a preoccupation with an imagined defect in appearance?

Body dysmorphic disorder sits in the obsessive-compulsive spectrum, though it tends to bring more depression and social avoidance than OCD does.

Which comedian, star of the Netflix series Lady Dynamite, calls her form of OCD Unwanted Thoughts Syndrome?

Maria Bamford based the series on her own life, and she has also spoken about being diagnosed with bipolar II disorder.