Does Everybody Have a Little OCD in Them?

Does Everybody Have a Little OCD in Them? (1:21)

Some people have an obsessive compulsive personality, but those people typically don't have rituals and don't have OCD. In this video, Wayne Goodman, MD, psychiatrist at The Mount Sinai Medical Center, explains what makes an OCD diagnosis.

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That question raises the distinction between what we refer to as obsessive compulsive personality and OCD. There are individuals who are very perfectionistic and to a degree that's very useful, i certainly like people working with me who are very detail oriented. But when it becomes a problem, a personality disorder is when they become excessively controlling and insistent that everything be done their way.

Those people though on contrast OCD don't have [xx] rituals, they don't have a particular concern except making sure everything is the way they want it. A lot of people with OCD may think that because they're perfectionistic or they like order, they have OCD. That's not the case.

In order to qualify for the diagnosis of OCD, it needs to begin to interfere with your functioning. The threshold we use to define that is it take up at least an hour a day, waste of hour of your time each day, got devoted to these useless thoughts and behaviors.