Better Treatment Needed

I don’t exactly know what this post will achieve, but I personally am getting tired of the lack of progress in new pharmacological treatments for OCD. As it is, the medications prescribed for OCD were all developed and intended for other conditions. SSRIs are still the primary medications used, and they’re really meant to treat depression and anxiety. They aren’t even always effective at doing that. Clomipramine is an antidepressant marketed for OCD, but it was partially labeled that way because there were already enough drugs available for depression at the time. Not to mention all its side effects. Anti-anxiety medications like benzodiazepines are addictive and only treat the anxiety in OCD, not the underlying obsessions, compulsive drives, and intrusive thoughts that really lead to the anxiety. There may be no perfect drug that can directly reduce obsessions, compulsions or intrusive thoughts. That would be a complicated process for one medication to handle. But it doesn’t seem like much focus has ever been placed on ameliorating OCD. And since it affects 1 to 2% of the world’s population, there’s clearly a demand for better treatment. So if not a medication, then other things need to be explored. TMS should already be FDA approved for OCD, so people can actually afford it. ERXP therapy also needs to be regulated better so it isn’t ridiculously expensive. Again, I’m not really sure what I hope to achieve here, but like we need to advocate as a community for our treatment. I don’t know if that means talking to individual doctors or trying to somehow reach out to universities or research facilities, but this is not satisfactory. And it doesn’t seem like much is going to change unless we advocate for ourselves. So like, please help me advocate in whatever way you feel you can.