The Daily Mail Does It...

...Quite well actually!

If I Don't Stir My Tea Nine Times, I Believe My Husband Will Die is the Mail's take on OCD, which was bound to come after Jon Richardson's Tuesday night documentary on Channel 4.  After documentaries, newspapers generally jump on the bandwagon because public interest will have been raised, particularly after  such a high profile programme in which someone famous 'came out'.

The Daily Mail chooses to focus on three women who tell their 'OCD stories' and explain a little about the condition.  Although I'm disappointed that they've chosen three women, who are all of similar ages and all developed OCD after a traumatic incident, - although many of us say that there was no incident which triggered us initially; we were just 'born with the gene' - I think the paper deals with the article fairly well.

Sometimes, OCD is portrayed as a 'freak disease' and people with very bizarre and extreme compulsions are used as examples and this gives the message to the public in general that we are both weird and dangerous.  'Avoid these people at all costs', the article seems to be saying.

Very rarely are people with OCD dangerous - we mainly perform our compulsions in order to stop ourselves, or others, getting hurt - and any strange compulsions are making us feel mad and embarrassed as much as other people.  It's important to remember that OCD isn't an inhibition-lowering illness: we are aware of what our compulsions look like to others, we're just rather unable to stop doing it for fear that it will cause something terrible to happen.

So, yes, the Mail seems to have dealt with the subject in a fairly non-sensationalising way and also named Jemma and Jodie Kidd as famous sufferers.  I don't know why but, as a sufferer, it's always comforting to know that there are beautiful, successful people who have to touch the fruitbowl with their left hand first...