OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder)
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
40 free OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
OCD is one of the most talked-about mental health conditions and one of the least understood. The phrase gets used for anyone who likes a tidy desk, yet the real disorder is a cycle of unwanted thoughts and the rituals people perform to quiet them, and doctors have been puzzling over it for centuries. This quiz gathers the fun facts people go looking for: how the condition got its name, what brain scans and medicines have revealed, how past ages explained it, and which film and television characters brought it to the screen. You will also meet the athletes, musicians, writers and presenters who have spoken openly about living with it. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so each question leaves you with something to pass on. The questions start with famous faces and familiar stories, then climb toward the science and history that will test psychology students and anyone who lives with OCD or loves someone who does. Nothing here is medical advice; it is simply a friendlier way to learn how the condition really works.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which actor won an Oscar for playing Melvin Udall, a novelist with OCD, in As Good as It Gets?
Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson took Best Actor on the same night that his co-star Helen Hunt, playing a single mother, won Best Actress.
Q 02Which Deal or No Deal host with OCD offers contestants fist bumps instead of shaking their hands?
Howie Mandel
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.
Q 03Which monsters does European folklore often give arithmomania, an OCD-like compulsion to count seeds?
Vampires
Vampires and counting still go together on Sesame Street, where Count von Count is known for counting everything and anything.
Q 04Which former England football captain says his OCD makes him keep everything in a straight line or in pairs?
David Beckham
David Beckham's wife Victoria has said that even the family fridge is co-ordinated down either side.
Q 05Which billionaire, the subject of the film The Aviator, had OCD that showed as an intense fear of germs?
Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes was also fixated on minor flaws in clothing, friends recalled, and the film shows him growing more unstable as his OCD worsens.
Q 06Which activist, Time's Person of the Year for 2019, has been diagnosed with OCD and selective mutism?
Greta Thunberg
Greta Thunberg has described her selective mutism as meaning that she only speaks when necessary.
Q 07Which actor won three Emmys as Adrian Monk, a San Francisco detective with OCD and many phobias?
Tony Shalhoub
Tony Shalhoub was nominated for the role eight years in a row, and the series itself collected eight Emmy Awards.
Q 08In 15th-century Europe, the blasphemous obsessive thoughts now linked to OCD were blamed on which cause?
Possession by the devil
Possession by the devil meant the usual cure was exorcism, though most sufferers reported only anxiety, religious fears and evil thoughts.
Q 09Which author of The Fault in Our Stars drew on his own OCD for the novel Turtles All the Way Down?
John Green
John Green gave his teenage heroine Aza Holmes a form of OCD that shows up as a fear of the human microbiome.
Q 10Which 18th-century dictionary writer, thought to have had OCD, performed rituals before crossing doorways?
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson also touched every post on the street as he walked past and would only step in the middle of paving stones.
Q 11SSRIs such as fluoxetine, the first-line medicines for OCD, are named after which brain chemical?
Serotonin
Serotonin helps to regulate emotions, mood, memory and sleep, and some people with OCD have low levels of it.
Q 12Wegner's thought-suppression experiment, often linked to OCD, asked people not to think of which animal?
A white bear
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.
Q 13Sigmund Freud's patient Ernst Lanzer, whose illness would now be called OCD, is remembered by which nickname?
Rat Man
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.
Q 21In which Ridley Scott film does Nicolas Cage play Roy Waller, a con artist with OCD and Tourette syndrome?
Matchstick Men
Matchstick Men gives Roy a ritual of opening and closing doors three times while counting aloud before he can walk through them.
Q 22Which host of the Nickelodeon game show Double Dare discovered at the age of 43 that he had OCD?
Marc Summers
Marc Summers made the discovery in 1994 while co-hosting a show on Lifetime, the year after his run on Double Dare ended.
Q 23Which former member of the pop group Fifth Harmony wrote a 2020 magazine article about living with OCD?
Camila Cabello
Camila Cabello published the piece in WSJ Magazine to mark Mental Health Awareness Month.
Q 14Trichotillomania, which the DSM-5 groups with OCD, is a long-term urge that results in which behaviour?
Pulling out hair
Pulling out hair was filed under impulse-control disorders until the DSM-5 moved it into the same family as OCD.
Q 15Which Neil Simon comedy centres on Felix, a neat, uptight roommate said to show common symptoms of OCD?
The Odd Couple
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.
Q 16Which US goalkeeper, who made 16 saves in one World Cup match, has both OCD and Tourette syndrome?
Tim Howard
Tim Howard was diagnosed with both conditions when he was in the sixth grade, years before that World Cup night against Belgium.
Q 17Which musical TV series features Emma Pillsbury, a guidance counselor with OCD and a phobia of germs?
Glee
Glee cast Jayma Mays as Emma, and flashbacks trace the roots of the character's OCD back to when she was eight years old.
Q 18Clomipramine, an early OCD medicine, is also sold in the US as Clomicalm to calm which pets when left alone?
Dogs
Dogs are the only animals the drug is licensed for in the US, where vets prescribe it to treat separation anxiety.
Q 19The PANDAS hypothesis links the sudden onset of OCD in some children to an infection with which bacteria?
Streptococcus
Streptococcus is the suspect: antibodies made to fight it are speculated to attack the brain's basal ganglia, though the diagnosis is controversial.
Q 20Which first-line OCD therapy grew out of Vic Meyer's work with two hospital patients in the 1960s?
Exposure and response prevention
Exposure and response prevention had the two patients face situations that made them anxious while they were kept from performing any compulsions.
Q 24Which English singer, who rose to fame with the hit single Budapest, has said he has the Pure O form of OCD?
George Ezra
George Ezra has Pure O, a form in which the obsessions and anxiety come with purely mental, not physical, compulsions.
Q 25Which punk rock band was co-founded and fronted by Joey, a New York singer diagnosed with OCD at 18?
Ramones
Ramones frontman Joey was born Jeffrey Hyman in Queens, and he founded the band with Johnny and Dee Dee.
Q 26Which theologian, who sparked the Reformation with his Ninety-five Theses, is thought to have had religious OCD?
Martin Luther
Martin Luther shares that reputation with the Catholic bishop Alphonsus Liguori, who is also thought to have suffered obsessive religious doubts.
Q 27Which author of The Pilgrim's Progress described his tormenting obsessions in the memoir Grace Abounding?
John Bunyan
John Bunyan would mutter the same phrase over and over while rocking back and forth, long before OCD had been given a name.
Q 28Which founder of the Jesuits wrote in his memoirs of feeling that he had never completely confessed his sins?
Ignatius of Loyola
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.
Q 29Which form of OCD, whose name traces back to a Latin word for a stone, centres on moral or religious fears?
Scrupulosity
Scrupulosity can take the form of a fear of being an evil person, or of divine retribution for sin such as going to Hell.
Q 30The English term obsessive-compulsive began as a translation of Karl Westphal's word in which language?
German
German psychiatrist Westphal, who worked in Berlin, wrote of Zwangsvorstellung, and in 1871 he also coined the term agoraphobia.