Transcription
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8:22, third Wednesday of the month, we get to visit with the folks from the McCall Center for Behavioral Health, and our topic remains the same, but pinch-hitting this morning. We’d like to welcome back Maria Coutant-Skinner, who’s of course Executive Director at McCall.
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Good morning. Good morning, Dale.
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How are you?
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I’m well. Welcome to the broadcast.
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Thanks for joining us. Great to be here. Our topic remains the same. We are talking about obsessive compulsive disorder. And you know, this is a little bit of an unexpected topic for me in the pantheon of things that we discussed with McCall. I wouldn’t think this would be really, you know, within the sphere. So that’s kind of important to discuss because OCD You think of somebody’s personality as maybe it’s just some quirk.
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Right.
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But it goes really beyond that. So let’s kind of define it for what it is.
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It does. And I appreciate that we’re having this conversation. I think a lot of people associate McCall with addiction recovery and treatment. And what we really want folks to know is that we are a comprehensive health care organization. We take care of folks with all kinds of behavioral health, mental health needs, and we do have expertise in addiction, we really have a lot of expertise
0:01:17
in treating mental health, trauma, really the whole person. And this is an opportunity for us to talk a little more deeply about one aspect, obsessive compulsive disorder, which, you know, I think people oftentimes will say kind of like, oh, that’s my OCD, if they find themselves organizing something or even triple checking that their alarm is set. But really, OCD is a specific disorder that falls under the category of anxiety disorders.
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It affects about 1% of the population. It impacts people’s lives to the point where it’s challenging to function. People can and do, but it’s a serious set of issues that really intrude on a person’s life and well-being.
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For folks who may remember, it’s probably made most famous by Tony Shalhoub for the show Monk, of which he was this brilliant investigator, but he was constantly in this battle with his obsessive compulsive disorder. And a lot of that was manifested in a light-hearted way, but for
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somebody who deals with this, it can be no fun. Exactly. And it’s really characterized by a lot of intrusive thoughts that get caught in a loop. So it could be about, I think a lot of people associate it with germs and contamination and health and hand washing and things like that. And that is a very common way that it manifests. It can be other things too, but it’s really characterized by doubt and intrusive thoughts that are so hard to turn off. So it could be about religion, it
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could be about sexual orientation, it could be about, you know, when I was driving home, did I hit an animal or a person? Did I do somebody harm? You know, am I going to harm myself? Am I going to harm others? And it’s so hard to turn off those intrusive thoughts. It’s really suffering. It’s torturous for folks.
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Now, the way you just described it, I look a little bit beyond that to possibly esteem issues or possibly anxiety, as you mentioned before, because there are some close correlations there. So is that something when we get into treatment then, you know, we get back to trauma, we get back to pain,
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we get back to sores. Exactly. Can it be sores the same way or is it just something in the way some people are wired?
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Well, I think one of the things that’s kind of interesting is it’s most likely all of the above, but we don’t have really conclusive science about the root causes of this. We know how to treat it and to kind of take one step back so those obsessive thoughts then lead to, because it is so torturous, then there’s compulsive behaviors that folks use to be able to cope. So it could be going back and re-driving, re-tracing your steps, driving that route, turning the light switch off as you left the house.
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Did I turn that oven off? And these are compulsive behaviors, the hand washing, all those things that hopefully the person is seeking to find some relief. But really, essentially what it does is it creates a cage in which people live. And in the beginning, those compulsive behaviors are adaptive. And again, it’s seeking relief and a way to cope.
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So if somebody’s on a plane, it’s this very, you know, the young, young subconscious part of our brains that say to us, if you don’t fly anymore and you stay home, you’ll be safe. So ultimately, that’s what our brains and that root anxiety is trying to get us to do, is to stay safe.
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How do we break that loop? So how do you get, like you said, that has been the way of seeking belief from this, or it’s a coping mechanism. Do we find another mechanism? Yes.
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So there are ways to interrupt those thought loops and there’s really effective therapy models that folks have found relief with and there’s also medications that are incredibly helpful. And I think that’s the overarching message of every single time we come in and talk with you Dale is that a lot of times people are stuck in their suffering and they don’t have to be.
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That help is available and it’s effective and that’s really the message. There’s things that we can talk about in the immediate. You catch that thought loop. You can change it. And the other thing is to know that you are not your thoughts. Okay. So you don’t always have to believe your thoughts. We often have, like all of us, have had something that we relate to in this conversation. You can have a thought that’s outrageous or scary, but you don’t have to believe it.
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You don’t have to act on it. And that’s what treatment gets people to do, is find some freedom to know how to do that.
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So people who suffer from OCD, and we’ve talked about a lot of different illnesses like this as well, that they have a hard time getting people to take it seriously for the seriousness that it is.
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And people will try to talk them out of it using logic and reason, which is of course, that seems human and you don’t want to see your loved ones suffer. And so you’re countering that thought loop with…
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Let me solve this for you.
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Yes, exactly. But that’s unfortunately, that’s not all that effective. So there’s some really good resources if you look at NOCD, International OCD Foundation, NAMI.org or come and see one of us at McCall and especially for loved ones and the person impacted there are ways that
0:07:09
we can help. Maria Cotan-Skinner is executive director at the McCall Behavioral Health Network. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is our topic for this morning. Have we covered it or is there a last word we can leave for somebody who would really like to get some help with this issue?
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Well, just one other kind of related piece and that is that we never turn anybody away because of an inability to pay. So if this resonates with you or you know that you’re worried about somebody, call us, talk to us, we can help you. And our annual appeal, which is out right now, make sure that we’re always able to keep that promise for anybody that comes through our door.
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McCallBHN.org on the web, or just type in McCall Behavioral Health Network in your search engine and it will come up. Maria, a pleasure having you on the show.
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Always a pleasure to be here.
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Thank you. Best of the holidays for you, your family, and everyone at McCallBHN. Best of the holidays for you, your family, and everyone at McCallBHN.
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Thank you.