Obsessive Compulsive Spectrum Disorders.
The process of finding a system or way to order all the different psychological disorders is both difficult and tedious.
With every step forward in the research of these disorders, the medical world is able to improve the way of cataloguing them in a coherent way, all this to the benefit of the diagnosis of patients and to finding some widely accepted criteria for doing so. Results are all included in the DSM ( Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.), a manual that has seen several versions since it has been first introduced to the medical world.
But there are so many different perspectives from which you can look at the mental disorders and with these differences comes the complexity that makes the DSM into a rather dynamic process of constantly re- shifting the place of the disorders in the manual.
With each newly discovered disorder or researched part of 1, changes may have to be made. New technologies add to the constant evolution, new parts of the brains are being mapped and new links are made between how certain chemicals in the brain can be at the base of disorders that until then may have been thought to have been caused by upbringing or surrounding.
In recent years a number of clinical psychiatric syndromes have been recognized which may possibly be related to OCD. They form a distinct category of inter- related disorders which are referred to as:
Obsessive Compulsive Spectrum Disorders.
"These disorders and OCD are said to overlap in terms of phenomenologic features, clinical course and treatment response; may share a common pathophysiologic basis and genetic predisposition; and often occur comorbidly."
(Courtesy of the Canadian Medical Association.).
Even the professionals are still not agreeing on some of the disorders which should be or have been included and which shouldn't be or haven't been included, but this is what the list of Obsessive Compulsive Spectrum Disorders looks like right now (Anno 2002).:
The disorders are the following.:
- Impulse-control disorders such as.: Trichotillomania, pathological gambling, compulsive buying, onchophagia and psychogenic excoriation.
- Somatoform disorders such as.: Body dysmorphic disorder and hypochondriasis.
- Eating disorders such as.: Anorexia and binge eating.
- Compulsive sexual disorders.
- Tourette's syndrome and other movement disorders.
Often included are.: - So-called "schizo-obsessive disorders", "delusional and schizotypical OCD" and "obsessional schizophrenia."
Are proposed to be included.: - Certain addictive disorders, impulsive personality disorders, and repetitive self-mutilation.
Recently Included.: - Subsyndromal OCD, meaning OCD that does not cause impairment or distress.
