Health Check: OCD study

PROVIDENCE—Researchers in Providence are trying to better understand obsessive compulsive disorder, a debilitating mental illness.

OCD is more common that you might think. The National Institute of Mental Health said it affects more than 3 million Americans.

Researchers at Butler Hospital are so interested in learning more about it.

“Their thoughts are usually something bad is going to happen, followed by an irrational sort of a senseless urge to do something to prevent that harm, like counting things a certain number of times, or touching, or washing your hands to prevent you or someone else from getting sick,“ said Butler’s Dr. Benjamin Greenberg.

Mario Della Grotta, who became the face of OCD in Rhode Island, lost his life earlier this year from an unrelated illness. But his case made an impact on researchers.

“He was courageous in being public about his illness and about the treatments he went through, including, at that time, an experimental procedure of deep brain stimulation,“ Greenberg said.

That treatment is now approved by the FDA.

But Greenberg and his associate at Butler Hospital, Dr. Nicole McLaughlin, want to understand more about the illness.

“OCD runs in families,“ Greenberg said. “So, what we need is a large number of people with OCD and their parents and/or their siblings—their brothers and sisters. The person with OCD would have to have an interview to show that they have OCD, and then we need blood samples from their relatives.“

Doctors know OCD is a complicated disease that probably involves a number of genes. So, by looking at DNA samples they hope to learn a couple of things.

“One is if we understand the biology of OCD better than we do, and we’ve made strides, but there’s a lot we don’t know. We could come up with better treatments,“ Greenberg said.

“The other thing we might learn from this study, and we hope to learn, is we should be able to tell who’s at higher risk to get OCD, and then we might be able to figure out ways of either preventing it or intervening really early,“ he said.

The study at Butler Hospital is being funded by the National Institutes of Health, and Butler is one of two sites in New England recruiting. The other is in Boston.

They’re looking for people diagnosed with OCD who have family members willing to take part.  For more on this study, call 401-455-6608 or visit the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Genetics Study.