Camille is a PMHNP student preparing a presentation for a group of primary care providers

Answer:

Obsessions are persistent thoughts, impulses, or images that cause anxiety. Repetitive behaviors, a person’s attempt at neutralizing the obsessions, commonly accompany OCD. These behaviors are called compulsions. It is common for patients to experience difficulty managing their daily activities.

People with OCD are most often plagued by recurrent, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and repeated behaviors (compulsions), which they perform to try to neutralize or lessen the impact of the obsession.  Obsessions are thoughts, images, or impulses that have the same theme. For example, someone with an obsession of harming people might have violent thoughts, images of hurting people, and compulsive urges to harm others. Each time the obsession comes up it feels like it can’t be stopped and there is a high level of distress associated with it.

Question:

Camille is a PMHNP student preparing a presentation for a group of primary care providers on common signs and symptoms of psychiatric disorders often first seen in primary care offices. The goal is to increase awareness of early indicators for mental health referral. When discussing obsessive-compulsive disorder, Camille discusses that the most common pattern of obsession is: