Obsessive ideas
Obsessive ideas – repeated thoughts, urges, or mental images that are intrusive, unwanted, and make most people anxious. Sometimes obsessions may evolve, intensify, and change to overvalued ideas. These ideas are then viewed by the patients as realistic, are associated with poor insight, and are prognostically related to worse outcomes.
Common obsessions include:
Fear of germs or contamination
Fear of forgetting, losing, or misplacing something
Fear of losing control over one’s behavior
Aggressive thoughts toward others or oneself
Unwanted, forbidden, or taboo thoughts involving sex, religion, or harm
Desire to have things symmetrical or in perfect order
Compulsions are repetitive behaviors a person feels the urge to do, often in response to an obsession.
National Institute of Mental Health. (2023). Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: When Unwanted Thoughts or Repetitive Behaviors Take Over. Retrieved from: https://shorturl.at/suVjV
Neziroglu, F., McKay, D., Yaryura-Tobias, J., Stevens, K., Todaro, J. (). The overvalued ideas scale: development, reliability and validity in obsessive–compulsive disorder. Behaviour research and therapy. Retrieved from: https://shorturl.at/JyNVr
Kitis, A., Akdede, B., Alptekin, K., Akvardar, Y., Arkar, H., Erol, A., Kaya, N. (2007, 30 January). Cognitive dysfunctions in patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder compared to the patients with schizophrenia patients: Relation to overvalued ideas.