Attending school presents students with opportunities to develop academic skills along with social skills that will follow a student throughout life. For a student who has OCD, symptoms can present barriers to social development.
When a student has OCD, the patterns of problems of the disorder may become more obvious and predictable. It’s unrealistic to expect disciplinary action to change what the student is unable to change, and it may actually create more stress for the already distressed student and exacerbate symptoms.
Students who have OCD may benefit from social support strategies at school.
Teachers, principals, school nurses, social workers, psychologists, counselors, and paraprofessionals can play a pivotal role in helping a student.
It may be hard to recognize that OCD is causing learning difficulties, interpersonal problems, or great distress and anxiety. When students are barraged by obsessive fears, doubts, and urges, they may perform rituals or compulsions to neutralize or undo these thoughts or feelings to try to feel better. But sometimes it’s not clear that a student’s behavior is connected to OCD. Students who have OCD may not perform these actions repeatedly in the classroom, or they may be completing rituals mentally or covertly.
OCD is like an unwelcome guest with bad manners. It moves into a mind — and it doesn’t want to leave.
Students with OCD may appear to be daydreaming, distracted, disinterested, or even lazy. They may seem unfocused and unable to concentrate. But they are really very busy focusing on their nagging urges or confusing, stressful, and sometimes terrifying OCD thoughts and images. They may also be focused on completing rituals, either overtly or covertly, to relieve their distress.
I am currently typing this in bed as I’m trying to avoid getting up. It is 2:13 pm and I haven’t found the motivation to start my day. It is a gloomy, rainy day so what about this makes me want to get out of bed? These are the days you want to just relax and watch movies. The struggle with anxiety is, this never seems to happen. Anxiety makes you think you should be doing more, that everything needs to be perfect.
I have learned that anxiety and depression go hand-in-hand, and there is no shame in having either — although it’s tough for many people to get their arms around that concept. When I struggled with both in my last couple years as the Texas Rangers’ baseball play-by-play announcer, the few people in whom I confided expressed genuine shock. “Depressed? About what? You’ve got a great job! Legions of adoring fans! A wonderful family!