The Age
It took 23 years for Penny Moodie to find an explanation for disturbing thoughts and repetitive behaviours that had plagued her since childhood, but had been treated purely as anxiety.
Talking therapy didn't relieve the intrusion of unsettling obsessions, and when the answer finally came, it was from a brave article by a woman with OCD, a mental health condition that is more prevalent than ever before.
"I came across an article in Good Weekend, written anonymously; a very honest description of someone's experience with obsessivecompulsive disorder (OCD)," said Moodie, a Melbourne mother of three. "By this stage, I'd been suffering for years and years without knowing [what it was], and reading this, everything just clicked into place. It was astonishing how cathartic it was."
Moodie took the article to her family and said: "This is me, this is what I've been going through."
Her experiences included being convinced she would contract AIDS as a child at primary school and going to her mother dozens of times a day for reassurance, and obsessive actions including handwashing.
In adolescence, her mind jumped sideways to sexual preoccupations that had nothing to do with her conscious self.
"I would worry that I would do something that would make everyone think I was a slut," Moodie said.
"I would examine everything for hours a day. It [OCD] affected my relationships, but none of my friends would have known."
Moodie was diagnosed with OCD at age 31. In the years since she began successful treatment, she has met and interviewed Australians whose distressing obsessions have included compulsively fearing there was asbestos at home and being afraid they may have cannibalistic or paedophilic tendencies.
"A lot of people with OCD experience such dark, dark themes because it's like, 'What is the worst thing I could imagine?"' she said.
"One woman told me she started worrying about the age of 16 or 17 that she was a racist it was at the time the Black Lives Matter movement was emerging, and she would run out the door, stick her head in the pool (to punish herself)."
OCD is not just about obsessive tidiness or maintaining order as popular culture often depicts it but can be something with far darker implications for those living with it. Moodie, now 36, hopes to communicate this in her candid memoir, The Joy Thief.
Australian Psychological Society president Dr Catriona DavisMcCabe said greater resources were needed to support the increasing number of people diagnosed with the "debilitating disorder".
"The last two National Mental Health and Wellbeing surveys show an increase in OCD among males and females aged 16 to 85," DavisMcCabe said.
The most recent survey, in 2021, found that 3.8 per cent of females and 2.5 per cent of males across that age range had experienced OCD in the previous 12 months. In 2007, the survey found the prevalence was 2.2 per cent of females and 1.6 per cent of males.
Davis-McCabe said OCD could "force a person to experience hundreds of obsessions and compulsions a day, and really interfere with social functioning, family and work".
People with OCD usually require 18 to 20 sessions with a psychologist to address strategies including exposure and response prevention therapy which Moodie has used and found very helpful.
Dr Kelvin Shiu Fung Wong, a clinical psychologist and Swinburne University researcher, said OCD most often presented as "obsessional doubts".
"I think of the pandemic as a stressor on everyone's life, and we know stress or traumatic events can often predict the occurrence of OCD," Wong said. "We're still not really sure of the links between the two, but the pandemic could have made people's anxieties well up."
Moodie hoped her book would help boost understanding about the disorder and help people to seek support. The condition, she said, "feels like being under siege from your own brain".
"What I want people to understand is how serious OCD is, it's not a quirk, it's not something that's a little bit annoying," she said. "It's absolute torture for those experiencing it. But ... it's really treatable."
'It's not something that's a little bit annoying. It's absolute torture.' Penny Moodie.