“I found the right treatment because my sister talked to a person at a cocktail party. You just never know where help is going to come from.”
–Susan Richman, president of the OC Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago, talked to Q about her victory over obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Richman had just passed the bar exam in California when she “became very ill. At 28, I was suddenly very concerned about germs. . . . I was cleaning so much that I wasn’t getting any sleep.”
She returned to her family in Chicago, where she “languished for a couple of years.” Then at a cocktail party, her sister “met someone who knew someone at the National Institute of Mental Health who knew something about OCD.” They suggested she undergo a therapy called exposure and response prevention, in which, in a supervised setting, she faced her fears by being exposed to germs.
“It was terrifying but liberating,” she said. Within weeks, she was “completely normal.”
Richman founded the foundation (www.ocfchicago.org) to provide information on the disease. Here’s a little public awareness: Richman said the main character in TV’s “Monk” is a bad example of someone with OCD. “He’s chronically ill. This disease is very treatable. But if he got better, they wouldn’t have a show.”