International Broadcaster Tries Hard but Makes a Few Mistakes Over OCD

[Tez]

Hi All

The world's largest single largest broadcasting station is China Radio International.  Like Radio Moscow in the seventies and eighties, it broadcasts round the clock in many languages, including English, and can be heard online, on FM and AM in many cities round the globe, and on shortwaves via powerful transmitters in China and Europe.  It is "soft propaganda" for the Chinese authorities - showcasing the country to the world.  

I was listening to their evening service in English directed at Europe on Monday evening, and was surprised to hear that the round table discussion programmes was on checking type obsessions.  They started with a good example of how everyone has experienced obsessions - like when you go down the garden path and cannot recall whether you locked the front door.  And they discussed how this can be come a clinical problem for a small subset of people.  I thought it was a good stab at understanding OCD, but the language used was imprecise, and they soon started on "perfectionism" and "perfectionistic" people, which is of course, not accurate clinically.  

Even so, with over a billion Chinese people, there are going to be a considerable number of people with OCD.  Any attempt to understand and discuss the condition is to be welcomed.  

Best wishes

Tez 

[BristolChris]

Hi.

To be honest China has quite a poor human rights record so good luck with changing them It can be a bit more complicated than that though as I think  different countries have different criteria of what they call OCD. I think Britain's  is different from America for example. But I would imagine that is a mistake by the radio station.

[PolarBear]

Funny thing is, there is an OCD theme that involves being neat. Broadly the obsessions have to do with order and symmetry.

The difference between someone with this theme of OCD and an anal retentive fusspot is that the OCD sufferer has to rearrange and organize things again and again. Organizing is the compulsion but soon enough obsessions come back, things are not quite right and they have to keep organizing.