What Are the Most Common Obsessions with OCD?

What Are the Most Common Obsessions with OCD? (0:57)

Unwanted obsessions are at the root of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In this WisePatient video, psychiatrist Wayne Goodman, MD, of The Mount Sinai Medical Center, describes the most common hallmarks of OCD, including worries about germs.

Read Transcript

Well the two most common forms involve contamination concerns which is usually accompanied by hand washing or other cleaning or hygienic rituals and the other has to do with unwanted disturbing thoughts so all of us may have had at one time or another the thought, what will happen if I steered my car in the opposing traffic, what's stopping from doing that?

Or seeing the subway platform what stopping me from doing something impulsive there with everybody around me? And then that's a bleeding thought and you start thinking about it, some people with OCD can't get that thought out of their head and then they begin to wonder if there's something wrong with them