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Comment by djhworld | Hacker News Reader

I have OCD, although it's not crippling.

My triggers tend to flare up most at night before I go to bed, or in the morning when I leave for work. Did I checked the hob is off, is the fridge closed, did I lock the door? Did I close the windows? What if I left the iron on and it falls over and starts a fire the house burns down with me inside it?

It's amazing how the mind can "catastrophize" mundane situations.

I live alone which probably makes it worse, but it doesn't affect me too badly during the day.

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>"Did I checked the hob is off, is the fridge closed, did I lock the door? Did I close the windows?"

This is exactly me. I have to be consciously paying full attention when I lock my door, otherwise I'll get uncertain about it once I'm a few seconds out the door, and I'll have to go back and check.

I have never managed to actually leave my door unlocked by accident, but I have locked myself out of my apartment on three separate occasions, so I'm actually 3:0 on that, but I still have that uncertainty.

Is that necessarily OCD? I do that sometimes, but I think it's just regular worries coupled with a poor memory (and inattentiveness), that leaves me often unsure if I really did something like lock the car door.

When you combine it with having to count how many times I do it, e.g. I need to check the hob four times just to make sure.

I think it's a bit of both really, a bit of OCD, a bit of anxiety.

Wouldn't it make sense if all humans were along a continuum (possibly non-linear) with regards to OCD symptoms? Pick a point somewhere on that continuum; "normal" to the left, "OCD" to the right.

While this is somewhat true, it can easily lead to the idea that mental health problems aren't serious because they are just further along a scale than me.

We all have kidneys that don't work perfectly, so we are all on a continuum of kidney failure, however you'd describe some people as having kidney failure and others not, only a few people would be 'borderline'.

I appreciate that may not have been what you meant, just that your argument lies close to that kind of logic (though maybe by saying non-linear you mean to avoid this trap).

Mental health is totally a (multidimensional) spectrum, and in mental health it switches from normal to a "problem" if it's affecting your life. There are a ton of medical conditions where we've drawn lines in where we think it goes from normal to a problem (blood pressure, blood glucose) and I don't think anyone is saying "oh, your blood glucose is just different than mine, you don't have it that bad". We even have the term "prediabetic" to indicate that they are getting to the bad end of the spectrum.

I think it's incredibly useful to realize that all of us experience symptoms of anxiety and depression, intruding thoughts and compulsions, but those who with the problems are just those further along the line. It's not diminishing the issue, it's humanizing the sufferer. They aren't "crazy", they are suffering from something we all can relate to, but just in a manner that's unmanageable.

Too often the "spectrum" theory is used to humble-brag about one's own success in the face of self-diagnosed shortcomings. Vocal patients with mild cases of a disease can then receive more support and treatment than less-vocal patients with more severe cases.

That always happens. It's people clearing out "toxins" with "cleanses".

SketchySeaBeast responded eloquently, and I appreciate both of your posts. I'd also like to add that for me there's an aspect of scientific humility: mental health is complex enough that it's often unclear which conditions are more akin to kidney disease and which are more akin to high blood pressure. In that context, the labels "sick" and "normal" are too absolute.

How differently should we treat "sick" people? Do they milk their diagnoses extra sympathy as alluded to by stephengillie elsethread? Honestly I don't care too much about that. A much bigger concern is that labeling people "sick" justifies the creation of a self-sustaining industry dedicated to their "treatment". Even if nearly all of the researchers and physicians are well-meaning (which I believe), we need to be skeptical.

Most of all I resist the othering of the "mentally ill". What we regard as "normal" entails quite a range of irrational and strange behavior. I personally believe the best model is that nobody's "normal", yet medical intervention is rarely justified and ostracism is never justified.

What is a "hob"?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hob

Definition of hob

1 dialectal, England : hobgoblin, elf

2 : mischief, trouble —used with play and raise always raising hob

But your context describes some sort of appliance.

a stove

It's British English:

"Hob: the flat top part of a cooker, with hotplates or burners."

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