If you suffer from OCD, know someone with OCD or know a lot about it....

You could look through these:

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd/symptoms/
http://www.ocduk.org/ocd
https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd/symptoms-of-ocd/#.Wg86SLaca9Y
http://www.ocdaction.org.uk/community/stories


Sorry if this was a bit of the same thing.

I am currently creating my devised piece for GCSE drama, it is basically where they give you a stimulus (a picture, a script etc.) which you take inspiration from to write your own script and perform it.

My performance will be about mental health. It will be set in the mental health ward of a hospital. My character is a 17 year old girl who is struggling with OCD and is seeking help to try to lessen her compulsions and take back control of her life- control which she feels that the OCD has taken away from her.

She is going to meet another teenage girl who is struggling with a different mental disorder (My partner hasn't yet decided what, but I've suggested Multiple Personality Disorder, Bipolar or something along the lines of that.)

They're going to become friends, and help support each other through the difficult process of getting treatment. By supporting each other, they both manage to improve and their condition gets better, allowing them to be discharged from hospital.

The point of the performance is to be thought-provoking so that the audience think deeply about mental health, the stigma around it, and how they can help. It will hopefully inspire them to speak to someone with mental health, try to understand their situation and support them to help them.

I really want my portrayal of OCD to be as realistic and true as possible. I know the media tends to glorify OCD and even make it seem comical, but those are not my intentions. I want to show OCD in its true form, the way it can affect someone and take over their lives, and also how you can control compulsions.

For context- my character is obsessed with the number 3, she says some words 3 times, she walks in multiples of 3 (i.e. she counts 1,2,3,1,2,3 as she walks) etc. She also wears gloves and tries not to touch anything with her bare hands, because she is scared of contracting a disease, especially as she is in a hospital.

Please help me to create an inoffensive, true-to-life, thought-provoking drama piece that will show people what having mental illness is like!
_________________________________________________________

tl;dr - If you are OCD or know a lot about it, I need your help to tell me what life is like, and how I can portray OCD properly in my drama piece for school. Thank you

Try finding documentaries on OCD like Camp OCD. They may not show you the compulsions you are looking at, but should give you an idea of the anxiety involved and how that can come out. There is also a documentary about a youth mental health hospital (I can't remember the name, but it was by the BBC) which could give you some good insight.
If you have any more specific questions feel free to ask. I had/ have somewhat mild OCD.
At one point it included centring a lot of things around being even. I don't want to ramble on though so just ask if you need anything.

I think it's great that you're trying to give an accurate representation.

Thank you, I'll look at that CampOCD! I was trying to find a movie to watch at first, but they mainly represent OCD comically. I didn't think about documentaries!

I'm petrified of portraying it wrongly, hence all the research lol. I just feel that nothing could be worse than having a debilitating mental health problem and someone trying to act as if they have it and doing it all wrong or being offensive without trying to be! I'm quite happy to look into it anyway and it is one of the reasons why I picked mental health (we have to write a log about research and development for our piece, and I wanted to look into mental health more as I would like to understand it more and do research on it)

Thank you again

I suffer ocd for 5 years

was admitted to hospital

nearly died too.

you can ask me anything

I am currently creating my devised piece for GCSE drama, it is basically where they give you a stimulus (a picture, a script etc.) which you take inspiration from to write your own script and perform it.

My performance will be about mental health. It will be set in the mental health ward of a hospital. My character is a 17 year old girl who is struggling with OCD and is seeking help to try to lessen her compulsions and take back control of her life- control which she feels that the OCD has taken away from her.

She is going to meet another teenage girl who is struggling with a different mental disorder (My partner hasn't yet decided what, but I've suggested Multiple Personality Disorder, Bipolar or something along the lines of that.)

They're going to become friends, and help support each other through the difficult process of getting treatment. By supporting each other, they both manage to improve and their condition gets better, allowing them to be discharged from hospital.

The point of the performance is to be thought-provoking so that the audience think deeply about mental health, the stigma around it, and how they can help. It will hopefully inspire them to speak to someone with mental health, try to understand their situation and support them to help them.

I really want my portrayal of OCD to be as realistic and true as possible. I know the media tends to glorify OCD and even make it seem comical, but those are not my intentions. I want to show OCD in its true form, the way it can affect someone and take over their lives, and also how you can control compulsions.

For context- my character is obsessed with the number 3, she says some words 3 times, she walks in multiples of 3 (i.e. she counts 1,2,3,1,2,3 as she walks) etc. She also wears gloves and tries not to touch anything with her bare hands, because she is scared of contracting a disease, especially as she is in a hospital.

Please help me to create an inoffensive, true-to-life, thought-provoking drama piece that will show people what having mental illness is like!
_________________________________________________________

tl;dr - If you are OCD or know a lot about it, I need your help to tell me what life is like, and how I can portray OCD properly in my drama piece for school. Thank you

oh this sounds interesting. yeah, i have a similar kind of OCD as well since the age of 5. instead of numbers, i usually do that with letters, for example reciting the alphabet like every day. It's kind of hard to deal with it, especially at school when i used to learn english. suprisingly i found english hard because everytime i was asked to write something for english, i just end up thinking about the alphabet. this doesn't happen all the time, but it happens in general. Kind off annoying too.

That does sound annoying. Do you recite it out loud or in your head?

Also, what are you thinking when you get the compulsion to recite the alphabet? Do you think that something might happen if you don't recite it, or is it more like a persistent thought where you're just saying the alphabet without being able to control it?

I might have got this completely wrong lol. Hopefully I'm on the right track? Thanks for your help!

sometimes i end up reciting it loud, but sometimes in my head. it begins to embarrassing when i do it loud at school, but everyone understands my situation so it isn't too bad. now it isn't too bad, but it was a big problem during gcses. i usually get the compulsion when i work on writing long texts, but now i can control it a bit so that's good. i recite the alphabet a random times and it isn't intentional. hope this helps.

yeah i used to have harm ocd in the beginning of 2017-- i didn't know what it was at the time but it was reallllyyyy horrible and i thought that my life was over...i didn't have any cleaning compulsions but it was pretty much just really distressing images + thoughts about using violence against ppl ((( it caused me so much distress and anxiety and just....it was horrible..google harm ocd, i don't think many ppl know about it!

ive ocd and my obsessions and compulsions can change, so back when i was religious it was mostly linked to things that were blaspheming so id repeat phrases internally, and sometimes mutter them out loud to myself if i was very anxious, about how good god was. recently my ocd is more worried about my health, so things like routinely checking if i have a pulse and constantly knocking on wood normally three times, as to not accidentally jinx myself into getting cancer and repeating things to calm myself down, normally my repeated phrase touchwood.

I normally have to do said compulsions, like knocking on wood, because it helps calm myself down because i get a lot of bad intrusive thoughts on how I'm a terrible person or bad things so its more of a reassurance I'm not dying. So though already everyone gets intrusive thoughts , like when you're on a high place and imagine yourself jumping off said ledge even though you don't want to, i tend to get them a lot more often than other people. so more intrusive thoughts lead to more obsessions and compulsions, though i can't speak for everyone. if you have any questions I'm happy to answer

yeah i used to have harm ocd in the beginning of 2017-- i didn't know what it was at the time but it was reallllyyyy horrible and i thought that my life was over...i didn't have any cleaning compulsions but it was pretty much just really distressing images + thoughts about using violence against ppl ((( it caused me so much distress and anxiety and just....it was horrible..google harm ocd, i don't think many ppl know about it!

i just looked into harm ocd and i think you just explained a crap ton anxieties i have. may i say thank you for helping me realise that there was a specific sub category of ocd that explained a bunch of **** in my life.

Wow, I looked it up and that sounds terrible! So, you think these violent thoughts, but they're not your own thoughts kinda? Like you believe that violence is wrong and you don't want to cause harm, but your brain keeps thinking about doing it?