Author: Kathleen Steckbeck

            Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a mental health disorder that causes uncontrollable thoughts, called obsessions, and behaviors, called compulsions, that interfere with daily activities. These compulsions can be repeated numerous times throughout the day in order to soothe the anxiety associated with the obsessions. Common obsessions are the need to be clean, have things in order or specific places, and symmetry. OCD is chronic and there is no cure for the disorder. Many people suffering with OCD also have anxiety or depression because of their obsessions and compulsions. They feel like they cannot escape their disorder because it is so long-lasting and uncontrollable.

I know two people with OCD. One person, my dad, has a milder form of OCD whereas the other, my 6^thgrade teacher, had serious problems controlling his compulsions. My dad is obsessed with keeping himself clean. He had a shower built in his office bathroom so he can shower at work whenever he feels dirty and he washes his face more than 5 times a day. He is not scared of dirt but instead, he just feels the need to be clean more often than the average human. He keeps hand sanitizer in his car, desk, bedside drawer, bathroom, and pockets.

My 6^thgrade teacher let his OCD interfere with his ability to teach in class. Whenever a student would sneeze during his lessons my teacher would make them wash their hands in front of the whole class. He would also clean off the desks and chairs before and after a new group of students came into the classroom. He would get calls from parents complaining that he put their child on the spot in front of all the students. During flu season he would act anxious and uptight about all the germs in his classroom. I remember this being a struggle for him and he would tell us about his diagnosis, but at the time we did not understand what he was really going through. I believe that this disorder interfered with the ability of children to open up and feel close to him. We all saw him as an uptight and weird man but now I realize he had a disorder that is life-changing.

OCD can be a constant struggle for some people. Some of those affected, like my dad, have little obsessions and compulsions that mildly alter their day, and others, like my teacher, have obsessions that change the way they perform at work and interact with others. There is no cure, so those affected with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder are constantly in an anxious state which is unfortunate for them, and their relationships.

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd/index.shtml

The Preoperational StagE

The preoperational stage is the second stage in Piaget’s theory of development. It the stage that children ages two to seven are experiencing. During this stage, children have already mastered object permanence and senses, are starting to have a theory of mind and language, but still lack conservation. Having theory of mind means they are starting to understand how people’s feelings, perceptions and thoughts predict their behavior. Lacking conservation means the child cannot understand that the quantity of an object stays the same despite a change in shape or form.

This is a link to children lacking conservation in the preoperational stage

https://youtu.be/GLj0IZFLKvg

This is a diagram of conservation experiments. Children in the preoperational stage would say the two objects in the second column are different volumes, numbers, matters, and lengths just because they aren’t the same shape

My 5-year-old niece does not understand conservation because one time we were playing with play dough and I divided the play dough into equal balls. We were playing for a little and I squished my ball down to look like a pancake. She felt bad for me “having less” and gave me some of hers. She lacked conservation because the shape of my play dough tricked her into thinking I had less even if we had the same amount to start.

Children in the preoperational stage are egocentric as well. This means that they can only see things from their point of view and cannot understand other’s point of view. An example would be a child expecting their parent to know what their teacher was wearing at school without the parent seeing the teacher.

My 5-year-old niece lives in Connecticut and I live in Pennsylvania so when we talk it is often over the phone or on FaceTime. When she was about 3-years-old, I was talking to her on the phone and she told me “Look at that puppy”. She did not understand that I was not with her and could not see things from her perspective because I was on the phone. She was being egocentric which means she thought I knew things just because she was aware of them. She was unable to distinguish between herself and her aunt.

Cerebellum and Alcohol Consumption

The brain has many different parts but the section of the brain that intrigues me the most is the cerebellum. Nicknamed the “little brain”, the cerebellum contains fifty percent of the brain’s neurons within only ten percent of the brains volume. It lies under the temporal lobes and the occipital lobe and has its own divisions known as the primary fissure, anterior lobe, vermis and posterior lobe. Its main functions are motor learning, sense of position, balance and equilibrium, and speech. It is one of the parts of the brain that gets affected when people consume alcohol which explains the word slurring and loss of balance that occurs when intoxicated.

I have many friends that experienced changes in their cerebellum while intoxicated. This past weekend my friend had severe effects on her cerebellum. She drank too much alcohol and I was noticing changes in her speech, like slurring and jumbled words, and motor movements, like holding onto a cup and walking straight. The police tend to pick up on these signals as well when looking for which students to cite at a tailgate. Because of my friend’s inability to walk straight, the police approached her with questions of how much she drank and how long she had been drinking. When watching this I thought about how she was being affected and how they picked up on an unsafe amount of alcohol consumption based on the visible characteristics of an affected cerebellum.

The police breathalyzed her and sent her to the hospital because her blood alcohol level (BAC) was over the legal limit and unsafe. This shows that her blood was being “diluted” with more and more alcohol and the brain was taking more time to communicate. When outside fluids are in the blood stream and passing through the brain, parts like the cerebellum cannot coordinate the actions for which they are responsible. The alcohol also depressed the central nervous system which caused her slow reaction time and stumbling.

https://nba.uth.tmc.edu/neuroscience/m/s3/chapter05.html