Constantly stressed by a need to obsess

Where only first names appear, names have been changed to protect the identities of the sources.

In his upstairs bathroom, Michael, a junior, rolls up his sleeves and vigorously scrubs his hands with hot, soapy water before drying them with a towel. He pauses and stares nervously at his cracked and reddened palms. Unsatisfied, he plunges his hands back into the sink, rubbing even harder. Michael scrubs and dries 15 more times until the pain from his raw and bleeding skin forces him to stop.

Michael is one of 3.3 million Americans who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), an anxiety disorder characterized by recurrent, unwanted thoughts and repetitive behaviors, according to the Obsessive-Compulsive Foundation. Common obsessions include persistent doubts, extreme need for orderliness, aggressive impulses and, as in Michael's case, worries about contamination. Individuals with OCD derive no pleasure in carrying out their persistent rituals, only a temporary relief from the intense anxiety that mounts when they ignore the compulsions, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

Obsessive-compulsive students often have difficulty interacting normally with peers and controlling irrational thoughts. Michael's parents first suspected that their son had OCD when they observed his inability to socialize with his classmates. At nine years old, Michael was taken to a behavior therapy specialist, who diagnosed him with the disorder. For Michael and other students who suffer from OCD, every day is a struggle to cope with the social and mental challenges of life.

Uncontrollable desires

Michael's disorder began during his early childhood, he says, when his uncle died unexpectedly of a heart attack. Michael became obsessed with the idea that he, too, would have one. He spent countless hours researching heart attacks, even after his parents reassured him that he was safe. "I'd start to freak out," he remembers. "I kept telling myself, 'This is what's going to happen, and I'm going to die.' I'd constantly check the mirror to see if my eyes [were] dilated or my face [was] flushed."

Over the years, Michael's worries developed into constant fears that hindered his social life. Terrified of dying from contamination, Michael tried desperately to distance himself from others and was unable to spend time playing with friends. "I'd always have to be with my parents. I could never sleep at someone's house. I thought I was eating and touching things that would potentially kill me," he says.

Michael's fear of germs led him to wash his hands compulsively. The painful urge to scrub his hands every time they came into contact with a person or surface tugged endlessly at his mind. It did not help that every fictional adversity became a reality to him. After watching a movie in which a character was poisoned, Michael became paranoid about being poisoned himself. "It got to the point where I got afraid to eat food my parents made. I was always seeking reassurance and asking everyone, 'Am I okay?'" he says.

Junior Kevin McGehee experienced similar anxieties when his parents bought him a guinea pig for his eighth birthday. At first, he enjoyed its companionship, but a fear of the guinea pig's germs slowly crept over him, he remembers. McGehee convinced himself that the guinea pig was dangerous, and he scrupulously avoided touching it and its cage. Eventually, his fears became so intense that his parents took him to a children's hospital, where he was diagnosed with OCD.

McGehee's diagnosis was traumatic for his friends, his family and himself. Though his parents did their best to comfort him, they could not understand his innermost feelings, he says. He tried to ignore his obsessions, but they overwhelmed him. "If my mom would move something while cleaning, it would raise my anxiety. By seventh grade, I said, 'This is getting way too hard for me to handle by myself,'" he remembers.

According to Johan Rosqvist, an assistant professor of psychology at Pacific University, students with OCD often feel isolated because they realize that their peers do not share the same issues. Because of their preoccupations, OCD sufferers often have non-existent or very limited social lives. "Peers may reject and isolate [the sufferer] because he or she appears odd or does strange things," says Rosqvist. "OCD can be an enormous barrier to relationships in all environments."

Fitting in at school proved to be a challenge for McGehee. He admits that although he was able to distract his mind from obsessive thoughts at school, he could not avoid cringing at the germ-filled gym or washing his hands several times an hour. He was embarrassed by his disorder and refused to tell anyone about it, even his close friends or siblings. "No one else could understand what I was going through," he says. "I remember sitting in my room just crying. It was overwhelming."

According to Christine Purdon, a professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo, OCD sufferers find the compulsive act distressing because it can be time-consuming, tiring and shameful. She says that medication has little effectiveness in treating OCD; even the best medications produce only a 25 percent reduction in symptoms and almost a full relapse once the person goes off the medication. Rather, the best treatment is cognitive-behavior therapy, which is at least twice as effective and has a much lower relapse rate, she says.

Road to recovery

Although medications helped him, Michael believes that therapy was necessary to make him overcome his fears. Because he used to be afraid of handling glass, his therapist once handed him a bag of glass to prove that it would not harm him. After a few exposure sessions, Michael grew more confident. "There's always going to be a fear in the back of my mind, but I've learned techniques of dealing with it," he says.

After taking medications, McGehee was able to control his OCD more easily and eventually became comfortable with speaking about his disorder. In his freshman year, when he stopped taking medication, he was surprised to find that his anxieties were not as severe as before. "I think [the whole experience] has made me a much stronger person," he says. "I'm able to overcome a lot now."