Many health-care providers, patients and researchers are getting confused about the condition involving obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and its distinction with obsessive compulsive personality disorder (OCPD). Even with their similarities in terms of cases, names, and symptoms, both terms have different characteristics that can separate one from the other.
Basically, OCPD deals with the chronic and maladaptive pattern in dealing with people and changes in life that are described to have the following characteristics.
- Excessive requirement to be perfect and control in every aspect in the environment.
- Concerns with details, lists, rules or organization to the point that one will forget the activity’s major point.
- Excessive adoration for work compromising time with family or friends.
- Stiffness when it comes to ethics, morals, and values.
- Unable to avoid things that do not have value anymore.
People with OCD experience more about anxiety than a personal condition. This is the time when they feel recurrent compulsions and obsessions. Compulsions often have these characteristics.
- Behaviors that one thinks must be carried over endlessly. Common actions include cleaning, checking, and counting.
- Stopping a dreaded condition to occur, such as death or disease to happen to a family member or friend.
- Coming up with unreal solutions for problems that ought to prevent.
Obsessions often have the following characteristics.
- Ideas, images, and thoughts that simply linger but are unwanted may cause distress
- Thoughts that come from your own head, but you don’t have control over them
- Getting rid of obsessions with other actions or thoughts such as compulsions are distressing enough
Distinction Between OCPD and OCD
Although there are some similarities about these two conditions, there are methods to distinguish them apart. For instance, a huge difference between them is the existence of compulsions and obsessions. This is due to the fact that these characteristics are inexistent in OCPD.
So, although OCPD and OCD might involve the excessive engagement in certain tasks that will need delicate attention to some details including the act of creating lists or any related actions whatsoever. Here are some of the notable distinction between the two disorders.
- For those with OCD, certain tasks such as counting or listing are crucial in order to reduce the anxiety as a result of obsessional thoughts. So if you have OCD, it will be your action to create a list in a repetitive manner in the hopes of preventing disease or death to a person close to you. On the contrary, those with OCPD will justify making a list as an essential to increase efficiency.
- People with OCD are commonly distressed by not performing certain rituals or tasks. On the contrary, people with OCPD will consider excessive list-making as a requirement and essential.
- Persons suffering from OCD will spend much more time to perform certain rituals or tasks compared to those with OCPD.
- Normally, for sufferers of OCD, they seek for help to treat psychological stress as a result of the need to do compulsive behaviors. On the other hand, OCPD sufferers usually ask to be treated due to the conflict that is causing the gap between them and their family or friends in relation to the need for others to agree with your method of dealing with things.