North Jersey Media Group (NJ)

Herald News (West Paterson, NJ)

September 25, 1999

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Sometimes Leans on Religious Thought 

Author: JAMIE TALAN, Newsday

Page: B07

It began with a line from the Torah: "You shall serve God with joy." A 30-year-old man took the message as a threat from his maker. He'd better study the Torah -- fervently and quickly -- or God would strike him dead and leave his children orphans.

He stopped going to work, and he spent hour after hour studying the Torah, the Jewish scriptures. He began a crash tutoring course with his children. His obsession permeated the family home in New York City.

Family members called Steven Brodsky, an Orthodox Jewish clinical psychologist specializing in religious obsessions, and work began last week -- the week before Yom Kippur -- to help the patient overcome his wild thoughts and behavior. In the past three years, Brodsky has treated about 50 people of various faiths who have obsessive religious thoughts.

The American Psychiatric Association estimates that about two in every 100 people suffer from repetitive thoughts or behavior that they can't seem to control. It is not clear how many obsessive-compulsive disorder sufferers have a religious theme as their main symptom, but Brodsky says it is not uncommon.

People preoccupied with religious thoughts often appear to their ministers, rabbis or priests as anxious and over-the-top, but it is rare that religious leaders understand that the person may be suffering from a treatable psychiatric condition. Unfortunately, the religious leader may unwittingly feed into the obsession and make matters worse, Brodsky said -- for example, by downplaying the importance of their fears.

He initiated a letter-writing campaign to New York-area religious leaders explaining the difference between religious fervor and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

When OCD takes on religious manifestations, diagnosis is often difficult. A person plagued by obsessive thoughts may take every little concern to the rabbi, minister or priest. Or a person may stop going to church or temple altogether to avoid the triggers that bring on the thoughts. In both cases, the underlying problem continues to worsen. Recent studies in the past decade have shown that family relationships have little to do with compulsive behavior, which, it turns out, is driven by brain chemical imbalances. Medicines that regulate the brain chemical serotonin -- Luvox or Prozac, for instance -- work to quell the thoughts in about 70 percent of patients, said Dr. Eric Hollander, a professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan.

Copyright, 1999, Herald News (West Paterson, NJ)
Record Number: 18892171