Obsessive Compulsive Disorder 'Diagnosis' transcript
Kaye- So I just thought all this was just panic attack and I'd read up about panic attack, and in a book that iI read that also had information about anxiety disorders, I read something about OCD and I read that information thinking ‘Oh, that sounds a little bit like me'.
John: I self diagnosed, myself, and it was verified later when I went to see a psychiatrist.
Kaye - I went to the GP thinking it was still panic disorder, and she put me onto the dark clinic at the Melbourne hospital and they specialise in anxiety disorders and I went into them and the psychologist in there actually diagnosed that I had obsessive compulsive disorder.
Lucy - I was diagnosed probably when I was about 15 but I can look back and see examples now that I know what OCD is in earlier childhood
Tasman - I was diagnosed of having an anxiety disorder and a primary diagnosis of OCD when I was 29. My psychiatrist referred to it as having been a masked OCD. So, I probably had been living with it at that stage for about 15 years.
Wendy - I was diagnosed about 6 ½ years ago, by a doctor in Wodonga.
Danny - I still didn't know what OCD was when I found out what it was. But there was a great relief that there was a name for it. Because I really thought I was going mad. To really tell my doctor, initially, what I was doing, that took a long, long time. It took a couple of years actually.
Lucy - I was relieved, I guess, that it had a name. It wasn't me just being crazy or something. But then I was also, ‘oh my god, I've got something now. I've got an actual condition. So, I've got to work at it. I've got to get treatment. Or, I've got to do something.' It wasn't going to just go away by its own. It was a diagnosed illness that needed treatment.
John - I wasn't amazed or anything like that. I was just like, wow, there is something there and then I just um... nothing changed. I kept on hiding it. I hid it from my parents and my family. I didn't think, because I had a legitimate illness, that I was going to expose it for everyone to see. It wasn't until years later that it actually came out that I had OCD.
Wendy - I used to doubt, and think I was a bit of a pretender, and I was a fake and how do I know? Until I really was unwell, and then I'd know alright.
Kaye - Even though I'd read all this information and thought it was probably what I had. I still felt a bit shocked. The next day , it was like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulder. Finally there was a name to what I'd been feeling.
