Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

I got to watch this wonderful movie named, ‘As Good As It Gets’. It is about a writer who has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). His name is Melvin Udall who is really rude to all the people he meets and loves only himself. He gets angry at small things, for example, he gets so angry at his gay neighbor’s dog, for urinating in the hallway. He is so angry that he puts the dog in the garbage chute. He is very specific about all the things he does. He only eats at a specific restaurant and at a specific table there. He also wants to be served by a specific waitress whose name is Carol. He gets irritated if somebody else comes to him. He gets really annoyed once, when Carol cannot come to work because, her son, Spencer, is sick. So Mr. Udall
Comer (2015) says that, “According to DSM-5, a diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder is called for when obsessions or compulsions feel excessive or unreasonable, cause great distress, take up much time, and interfere with daily functions,” In his article, Thobaben (2012) explains that “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a combination of psychological, biological and genetic factors”. In the article, he explains that the symptoms include repeated handwashing, fear of contamination and also repeated locking and unlocking because of doubt. (Thobaben, 2012). In the movie we can see that he shows the symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder several times. He show its symptoms by locking and un-locking the door five times to make sure it is locked. He also puts light switches five times by switching it on and off. Comer (2015) says that Compulsions are repeated thoughts or behaviors a person must perform to decrease anxiety. There are lots of other symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder he shows, which includes, he uses soap to wash his hands, but he only uses it once. Then he throws away the new soap which he only used once. He takes a new soap the next time. He uses very hot water to wash his hands. This shows that he is worried about contamination which is a symptom of OCD (Mayo Clinic). When he walks, we can see that he walks only through the middle of the bricks and never
At one point, we can see that the dog also tries to walk exactly like Mr. Udall walks, to not to walk on the side cracks. Also, once he had to drop Carol and Spencer to the hospital, because Spencer was sick, Mr. Udall tells spencer to cover his mouth when he coughs, because of his fear of germs (Help Guide). We can see several other examples in the movie that, he is having OCD. For example, when they go to Maryland, Mr. Udall and Carol decides to go to a restaurant. Mr. Udall goes to take a bath before going. We can see that when he open the door, hot air was coming from the bathroom as he was taking bath in extreme hot water because if his fear of germs (Help Guide). They goes to a restaurant and that restaurant requires coat for men to enter. They provided a coat to him there, but he was not willing to wear it because of his fear of germs as he knew that everybody who came there who does not have a coat wears that coat. He also did not want to wear it when the waiter there said that it has never been dry cleaned. He went to a nearby store to buy a new coat and tie for him. This is because of his fear of germs. This is another symptom of OCD (Help Guide). A symptom is also shown when he did not enter the coat store because they had really small tiles there as he cannot step on it. We can see that he stood outside the store and told the men there which coat and tie he wants.