The Speciality OCD clinic at National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru is organizing its Silver Jubilee Symposium on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and related disorders at the Convention Centre, NIMHANS on 11-13^th November, 2022.

The Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) clinic is a specialized clinic for the assessment and treatment of OCD patients. This is the largest out-patient clinic facility for the treatment of OCD patients in India.  OCD is a form of severe mental illness which is characterized obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions manifests as repetitive thoughts or images that most patients experience as senseless or excessive. The distress is so excessive that those who suffer often have to resort to compulsions to controls their distress. Compulsions are repetitive acts that an individual is driven to carry out in response to obsessions.

OCD symptoms can be widely varying. Amongst the most commonly reported are of people who spend many hours cleaning themselves or their belongings and report experiencing repetitive thoughts of being contaminated or unclean. Other common obsessions are excessive doubts, excessive fears of harming self or others, need for things to be in particular order etc. People experiencing this resort to repeated checking, seeking numerous reassurances, excessive praying, arranging and rearranging, etc. OCD is relatively common; however, most people are not aware that their symptoms or suffer from shame because of their symptoms and fail to seek treatment.

Alongside the clinic also provides treatment to disorders related to OCD, like Body Dysmorphic Disorder (excessive pre-occupation with appearance), Trichotillomania (repetitive hair pulling), repetitive skin picking, and Hoarding disorder (excessively collecting and not being able to discard unwanted items).

The specialty OCD clinic provides out-patient services every Tuesday. Severely ill and/or treatment resistant patients with OCD are routinely admitted in to the wards for intensive treatments. Medication and specialized counselling commonly cognitive behaviour therapy are commonly provided. Additionally, the unit provides brain stimulation techniques like deep transcranial magnetic stimulation, transcranial direct current stimulation etc. The unit has expertise in providing neurosurgical interventions like deep brain stimulation for patients who are not improving with all other treatments.  In the last 25 years, around 50000 patients are estimated to have been treated in the out-patients services, with around 7000 patients having received in-patient input.

As a specialised training centre, mental health professionals in psychiatry, clinical psychology and psychiatric social work are trained systematically on various aspects of OCD and allied disorders, including pharmacological and psychotherapeutic management. The centre routinely receives external trainees, including from SAARC countries.  A post-doctoral fellowship program has also been successfully ongoing for the last 10 years.

OCD clinic has a good consistent track record in research in various aspects of OCD. The research support is derived from various prestigious grants both nationally and internationally.

The Silver Jubilee symposium will have talks from leading International and Indian experts on various aspects of OCD and related disorders. Further, the academic extravaganza will also include workshops, poster presentations and quiz competitions.

An exhibition is also being organized in the Heritage Museum at NIMHANS on “Expressions of OCD” The exhibition represents selected entries of a Nationwide competition in painting, poetry, photography, and short-films which reflects creative thoughts, emotions and intuitions on obsessive compulsive disorders. The exhibition will be open through November, 2022.

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