Horizon: OCD a Monster in my mind review

I was very much looking forward to this Horizon documentary, the first real OCD program that so it seemed would be getting down to the real deal of how serious OCD really is.

It all starts off with members of the public describing themselves or friends they feel are "OCD" the usual opinions that lead to such a stigma in the first place such as things like to be just so, in a certain order, fussy and perfectionists etc.

The program is presented by Uter Frith who is a professor who clearly has a very open mind about OCD which is excellent to see, as she describes how OCD is much more serious than people believe as she sets out to meet 3 people who suffer from much more less common forms of OCD, exactly what i was hoping for so this was a very good start to me.

Also on and off during the program is short snippets of other OCD sufferers giving there thoughts and opinions on there OCD, EVEN BETTER or though i found this section a little disappointing i felt the sufferers could of been given a much bigger platform to further describe what there OCD is like, the rituals they feel the need to do etc.

Back to the 3 people Uter Frith is meeting consisted of first of all Richard who has a very serious form of Contamination OCD as we watch him having to clean his car for a very long period of time while he describes his OCD thought processes while cleaning his car, it was a very good start to see someone getting the chance to describe there OCD in this detail.

All his tables and chairs are covered in sheets as another drastic step Richard feels he needs to take to protect himself from Contamination.

Richards girlfriend Katherine and his Father feature in this part of the program as his Dad describes how if a fly was to come into the room and touch one of the sheets, Richard will have to wash and clean the sheets, himself and his clothes to protect himself from possible contamination from the fly, as Richard goes on to describe how much it mentally drains him.

"Once i had to have a Shower at 4 in the morning and did not finish until 2 in the afternoon" Richard says

"People say to me to ignore these thoughts, not to do these things, get better" Richard says.

Both could not be more true all OCD sufferers have been in this situation, ritualising for hours or people telling you to "Just ignore it" its good to expose and challenge this Stigma.

Richards part of the program finishes with him making a sandwich as he shows and describes the rituals and thought processes he needs to go through, the cameraman asks what issues are caused by the camera crew being there?

Quite rightly for someone in Richards position it is a huge deal to him as he says he has no idea where the crew have been, where the cameras been, have they been cleaned properly? and the whole ordeal becomes to much for him and the cameras have to stop filming :-(

His Dad goes onto say this is what people need to see and that is very true however hard to watch it maybe and however hard it is for people like Richard to be allowed to be seen like this.

Next up is Sophie, her form of OCD is intrusive violent thoughts , doubt all surrounding the fact she needs to reassure herself she has not killed people, imagine the constant fear you may of seriously hurt or killed someone? it would be a massive energy drainer.

Sophies story mainly revolves around her time with her CBT therapist as we see a few clips of her having a CBT session and helping her through her ERP program.

Finally it is a young woman from Holland named Nandia, and Nanda is about to have pioneering brain surgery to stop her worrying about components on her body, very similar to body dysmorphic disorder, and not Nandia included as it was again very refreshing to hear her side of the story, but for me personally the program took a slightly down hill turn from there.

The rest of the program was all about scientific research and past, present treatments in OCD and while some of this was rather interesting to watch i felt it was running off course to the true nature of the program which is helping people understand what OCD truely is and what it is truely like.

Perhaps less of this and more from Sophie, Richard, Nandia and the other sufferers we saw small clips from would of been much better? All in all it was a good program though and i feel it really would open the eyes of people who are very misinformed about OCD but personally future documentarys should be more about the sufferers experiences like a video diary as such and less about research and treatments.

But still a very excellent start in the Stigma fight against OCD