I have two family members with OCD. One of them was very extreme and non-functional long before the pandemic; the other had been able to live pretty normally before, but I'm not sure she ever will again. There are little cracks in the dam; she's starting to have a little human contact again. And I convinced her to avoid the bivalent booster. But the pandemic has basically broken her; she gave up a lot of things she enjoyed and I don't know if she'll ever have the courage to go back to them. It's very sad.
I think of OCD as a quintessentially American mental illness. There has been so much social support for it. Decades of ads telling you to scrub your house with poisons to save your chirren from germs. Portable bottles of hand sanitizer marketed with a belt loop so you can quick-draw it. If you're too slobby, they can take your kids away. If your house looks like an operating theatre, you are praised. OCD is just an elaboration of the American bourgeois fear-ridden way of life.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2022-11-05 03:04 pm (UTC)I think of OCD as a quintessentially American mental illness. There has been so much social support for it. Decades of ads telling you to scrub your house with poisons to save your chirren from germs. Portable bottles of hand sanitizer marketed with a belt loop so you can quick-draw it. If you're too slobby, they can take your kids away. If your house looks like an operating theatre, you are praised. OCD is just an elaboration of the American bourgeois fear-ridden way of life.