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Hi everyone,

Is there anyone in the UK who can possibly give me some advice here?

I have a place to study Primary education degree at uni come September. As part of the conditions we are to fill out a health declaration, which I have done. I was diagnosed in 2017 with OCD and was treated with 50mg Sertraline (daily) which I still take now and I had High intensity ERP therapy once a week for 6 months. My condition is managed, I rarely if ever have thoughts about it now and I dont engage in compulsions anymore. I've declared my condition as it says on the form failure to disclose information can result in you being thrown off the course. I understand with schizophrenia etc but surely there are others with OCD who manage to teach efficiently. My OCD centred around my sexual relationship with my partner and therefore never endangered anyone else.

Has anyone else had a similar experience and been declared unfit to teach? I am gonna be so upset as I have more than met the grades required and have worked so hard to get there and the health declaration is the only thing pending on my application. 

Any advice would be greatly recieved ?

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I have a relative who had depression for a little while and took an SSRI. When they were training to be a teacher they were asked to attend a health check up, they went, it was fine, nothing happened. They have been teaching for years. I think as long as you are open and honest there's really no reason to worry about it :)

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49 minutes ago, Irregular86 said:

Has anyone else had a similar experience and been declared unfit to teach? I am gonna be so upset as I have more than met the grades required and have worked so hard to get there and the health declaration is the only thing pending on my application. 

Hello Irregualar,

I don't know if this will help you, but the charity has over 700 members across the country and I know for a fact that at least a dozen of them have been or still are teachers, with declared OCD. The OCD was never an issue. 

In all my years doing the job I have not heard of anybody being declared unfit to teach because of OCD.

My good friend Lisa is a maths teacher in a top school and I know she's had time off work for therapy, pretty sure she declared it.  My ex (who also had OCD) is a teacher and my colleague Sue who is not in the office today was a teacher before she came to work for me and I am pretty sure she told me she had declared OCD when taking the teaching job on.  I had at least two members of my Nottingham OCD support group who are teachers with OCD too.

So I don't think you will have a problem, but don't worry, if you do, we can sort it out I am sure :)

Good luck with your application! 

 

 

 

 

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That is super helpful thank you so much, I'd just hate to have gotten through all the therapy to relieve the OCD thoughts and compulsions and worked my socks off to get my grades to be told sorry but no. I was thinking surely there are lots of people with it who do teach. I think it's just because it is taking so long for them to come back to me about it all that I am worrying. Thank you ?

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Hi @Irregular86, I'm not in/from the UK so I can't offer you any advice on the policy side (though looks like Ashley's got that covered) but just wanted to share some words of support and encouragement as someone who has worked in education and also has OCD.  First, congrats on pursuing a career in teaching, the world needs as many great teachers as it can get!  I did a little bit of volunteer teaching in the US for 3 years (computer science for high school, aka 16-18 year olds) and then taught English as a foreign language for two years here in Japan.  So like Ash said, people with OCD definitely can be teachers!  I also have friends who have OCD (or other mental illnesses they deal with) who are full time teachers back home in the US.  I hope there will be no barriers on the official side to your teaching, OCD can certainly make some things in our life more difficult but we are still worthy, talented people who can definitely contribute!  Congrats on all your hard work and achievements so far and best of luck going forward!

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