‘ON BAD DAYS, I FEEL LIKE I MIGHT NEVER LEAVE THE HOUSE AGAIN’
When the messaging around hygiene ramped up in February, you might have popped a few bottles of hand sanitiser in your supermarket trolly. The more prophetic among you might have ordered a face mask. But for the estimated 750,000 people who live with obsessive compulsive disorder, the hygiene messaging around Covid-19 represented something else entirely. Among the huge variety of obsessions and compulsions associated with this condition, fear of dirt, feeling contaminated and excessive hand washing are thought to affect around 50% of patients. In June, researchers from Genoa and Siena in Italy became the first to examine the impact of Covid-19 on
OCD. They evaluated the symptoms of patients just before they went into lockdown and six weeks in. As well as identifying a significant increase in obsession and compulsion severity, they found that those who were considered to be in remission before the lockdown experienced a worsening of symptoms, thanks to a combination of upsetting news coverage, non-stop hygiene advice and limited access to mental health treatment centres. ‘As my mum walked through the front door, with a bag of shopping in each hand, my brain clicked into high alert. She asked for my help unpacking the food, and I grabbed a bag. The second it made contact with my skin, I became hyper-aware of something invisible on my palm, burning into my skin. Moments later, I was viciously scrubbing my hands under the tap.
I was diagnosed with contamination OCD in 2018, but my OCD was first triggered three years earlier by a stressful period at university. Back then, my fear of being contaminated with germs that might make me ill was focused on food, and I stopped eating anything that hadn’t been prepared by me or my mum. Doctors thought I had an eating disorder, and my paranoid thoughts left them concerned I had borderline psychosis. I started to truly believe that I was losing touch with reality, so a diagnosis of OCD was a relief.
My compulsions shifted in focus; as well as fearing food, I began to feel afraid of touching or breathing in something potentially deadly. I wore masks and gloves back when they made people look twice. But towards the end of 2019, I was making good progress. Though I had to move back in with my mum, I was going to group therapy once a week. Taking up kickboxing and training to be a schoolteacher helped my recovery, too, since both forced me to be in close contact with others – germs and all.
It was the messaging around the virus that flicked a switch in my mind. ‘Wash your hands’ and ‘stay home’. Being told to adopt the habits I’d worked so hard to break sent my compulsions into overdrive. It felt like the building blocks of my progress were crumbling around me. Phone therapy wasn’t as effective as group therapy, where I was forced to be near other people and sit on the grubby chairs in the therapist’s office. Without the routines I’d developed to keep my OCD in check, it swelled to the point where I stopped going outside entirely.
That was late May and, in the months since, there’s been a war going on in my mind. I’m too scared to go outside and I’ve delayed my teacher training to prioritise my mental health. On bad days, it feels like I’ll never be able to leave the house again, that I’ll simply continue to exist without really living. In those moments, I find solace speaking to others struggling with OCD on Instagram (@fayekayart) and have found invaluable support from the mental health charity Sane (sane.org.uk). I know that if I don’t get back out there, I’ll never be able to do the things others take for granted: going to the cinema, going on dates, earning a living.
The pandemic has validated my OCD in some respects, but I hope that when all this is over, it will prove that my fears were unfounded, because I did survive.’
-
For help and support, visit ocdaction.org.uk