Is OCD a New Disorder?
OCD is not new. But today, thanks to ongoing research, much more is known about this neurobiological anxiety disorder than ever before.
If your adult child developed OCD when he or she was young, it was likely misdiagnosed at the time. Even today, many physicians do not recognize the symptoms of OCD in children.
Years ago, much less was known about the disorder than is known today. There were no consumer books written about OCD until the late 1980s. Until relatively recently, information was not readily available on the Internet. And just decades ago, medical research of OCD hadn’t even begun.
Given all this, few tools were available in the past to help doctors understand OCD—or to help struggling parents make sense of a child’s unusual behavior and help them treat that behavior. Many families never asked their family physician for help, and also did not have access to mental health professionals. And the stigma of having a child with a mental illness caused many families to hide the truth for fear of gossip, discrimination and shame.
So experts now believe that while OCD was present in children (and adults) in the past, the number of OCD cases was very much underreported, giving the impression that OCD is a “new” disease today.
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