Could a person in a Third World country have OCD? That might

[raccoon]

sound silly but I wonder. Same as with someone living in a previous century, say the Middle
Ages.

I'm thinking mostly of hand-washing here. In some environments, people wouldn't be able to wash
frequently.

[FirstLight]

1. good question...

i wonder sometimes if our modern society is what creates these issues...

[MineralMan]

2. Yes, of course they could.

"From the 14th to the 16th century in Europe, it was believed that people who experienced blasphemous, sexual, or other obsessive thoughts were possessed by the Devil.<37> Based on this reasoning, treatment involved banishing the "evil" from the "possessed" person through exorcism.<80> In the early 1910s, Sigmund Freud attributed obsessive–compulsive behavior to unconscious conflicts that manifest as symptoms.<80> Freud describes the clinical history of a typical case of "touching phobia" as starting in early childhood, when the person has a strong desire to touch an item. In response, the person develops an "external prohibition" against this type of touching. However, this "prohibition does not succeed in abolishing" the desire to touch; all it can do is repress the desire and "force it into the unconscious".<81>"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive%E2%80%93compulsive_disorder

It's likely that OCD has been part of human psychological disorders always. We just didn't have a name for it.

[chrisa]

3. Yeah, but with things relevant to their time period.

They could still do things like needing to touch something a set number of times, or something like that).

[Morning Dew]

6. Their humours are simply out of balance.

Leeches can fix that.

[EFerrari]

4. My godmother was in El Salvador until her early 20s

and she's as OCD as can be.

[MineralMan]

5. Here's another interesting reference:

http://www.ocdhistory.net/

[raccoon]

7. THanks for the link. nt

[MineralMan]

8. I suspect that OCD manifests itself in every culture. I've often

wondered about shamans and other people in basic cultures and whether they aren't suffering from some mental disorder or another. Religious people, too, like monks and the like. Some ritualistic religious behaviors have always seemed to me to be related to OCD. If you think about the rigidly controlled environment of a monastery, with all of its quirky patterns of behavior and strict schedules, it may just have developed due to OCD. For example, saying the rosary or repeating other ritual behaviors countless times a day could be classed as an obsessive behavior. What better place for sufferers of OCD than a community of the religious. I don't know...but that always made sense to me.

[raccoon]

9. I remember my Sociology teacher said in some societies, people that were mentally ill

--had visions, heard voices, etc., were considered the wise men of the group.

What you say about monks & the rosary makes good sense.

[tblue37]

14. Haave you ever read _Xenophobe_, by Orson Scott Card?

In it there's a planet of genetically engineered geniuses whose genius has been deliberately linked to OCD (as a way of controlling them). The ordinary people are taught to revere the most extreme OCD people as the "God-spoken." They are the elite in their society, and the peasants believe they are particularly saintly becuaue of their ritualistic behavior, which they believe to be undertaken in response to the gods' instructions.

The more OCD one of them is, the more brilliant, too.

The book is the third one in the Ender series (Afetr Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, but it is my favorite of the series.

Card is a fascist, but I do like the Ender series and some of his others--like the Alvin Maker series and the Memories of Earth series..

[hunter]

10. I think the object of the obsession arises from the culture.

If it's not handwashing, it's something else. If a kid is lucky they are directed to and latch onto an obsession that's not harmful.

I think some obsessive behaviors could be beneficial to a community's survival -- food hoarding, for example. That's why the tendency persists in the human gene pool.

A behavior beneficial to my great grandmother living in Idaho wilderness turned out to be a handicap for her daughter living in the city. My grandma filled her house with old food and useless crap and eventually had to be dragged out of the mess by police and paramedics. But my great grandmother lived in a place where you could be trapped in the winter for many weeks or even months and the stuff she hoarded could save her family's life.

My own obsessions tend toward technical things. I can immerse myself so deeply in computer code it's detrimental to a normal life. Unfortunately I've never been able to make a living writing or analyzing code because I become dysfunctional as a human being when I go in that deep. People have to eat and shower and stuff, and they shouldn't be running down the street wearing only their shorts at two in the morning.

My dad's father managed to direct the same sort of obsession into a career. He worked on the Apollo project as an engineer and he was fully immersed in that, but outside of work he was profoundly unhappy and depressed, and a bit mad.

Today we have meds for that. Meds keep me sane, or at least a little saner than I'd be without them.

[Douglas Carpenter]

11. from my travels and more than 25 years of living in the third world I think it is less common

True psychosis like schizophrenia certainly exist. But those are conditions that are probably more biological in nature than neuritic conditions like OCD.

I remember once asking someone in the Philippines if they ever came across anorexia and they never heard of it.

I think self obsessive neurosis like OCD is primarily a product of a highly individualistic (to put it positively) and highly alienated and self-centered (to put it negatively) society such as one finds in the West. Western life has a lot more privacy and along with it a lot more loneliness. In most third world societies one is much more apt to be surrounded by neighbors, close friends and extended family. One's life is much less self-oriented and much, much more social. With little time for one to be alone with their thoughts - I would say that just as they are less likely to develop individualist ideas they would also be less likely to develop self-obsessive notions.

[hunter]

12. Maybe it's not even as complicated as that.

Maybe they are simply less rigid and better able to fit the oddballs into the mosaic of their community.

Say, for example, somebody has anxiety attacks. Simple solution -- that person walks away and comes back when they are over it. No big deal to the community. Some people are just like that.

In our society you can't walk away at work or you lose your job. This pressure only adds to the severity of anxiety attacks.

[Douglas Carpenter]

13. oh no doubt about that. For all the talk of "western individualism"

-everywhere I have been in the so-called third world people have been much more accepting of personal oddities, less tripped out on the principle that "everybody has to be the same" and much more willing to overlook peculiar personal behavior with the understanding that, "oh, they are just that way."