OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER & MONKBy,

Katie Hanks

PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS

OCD

• Composed of two parts

• The obsession

• The compulsion

• An anxiety disorder

OBSESSION

unwanted thoughts

• Idea/scenario in which the person believes that they are in some kind of danger or inflicts danger on someone else.

COMPULSION

• repetitive, ritualized actions

• The actions are necessary to reduce the anxiety

MEDIA

MONK

• Monk is a former homicide detective and is now a consultant for homicide cases for the San Francisco Police Department.

• He suffers from extreme OCD and has numerous phobias.

• He does go to therapy to help with his OCD and phobias.

• So much so that his personal assistant have to drive him around, do his grocery shopping, and carry wipes for him.

CONNECTION

SIMILARITIES

• Like others who suffer from OCD Monk has to continually wash his hands because of a the obsessive thought of dirt and germs.

• People who suffer from OCD are always cleaning, checking, repeating, slowing down, and/or hoarding things.

SIMILARITIES

• Monk always has to clean and everything has to be symmetrical and that he will only drink certain types of water.

• Monk will take hours to do one simple task. Such as when he makes a sandwich everything has to be perfect or he cannot eat it and will throw away numerous sandwiches before he will eat one

SIMILARITIES

• While this can make him extremely socially awkward to a point where he has to write down key note to talk about in conversations this makes him a brilliant detective and profiler.

• Monk does have a tendency to fixate on that one thing until it is fixed or done right, just like a person with OCD does

SIMILARITIES

• Monk, just like many others who suffer from OCD, visits a psychiatrist to help with the problem

DIFFERENCES

• People who suffer from OCD tend to have only one or two specific symptoms, unlike Monk who has an array of OCD symptoms

MY TAKE

• The writers for the show did do their research, and since the shows executive producer David Hoberman suffers from OCD the show does know how that specific disorder works.

• While there is a big debate on weather or not the show has accurately showcased OCD, I believe that they have done a fairly accurate job.

REFERENCES

• The Everything Psychology Book

• The section on the OCD disorder

• www.wikipedia.com

• after typing in “Monk”

• I used the information specific to him