Getting official diagnosis/discussing potential ocd at work

[Kemu17Participant]

Hi All,

I was just wondering how everyone’s experience was of getting diagnosed on the nhs? And is it ok to mention OCD to my boss without a formal diagnosis or should I keep schtum?

I have been suffering from suspected harm ocd for the last 10 years. During this time I have had 3 bad episodes where I have had to take anywhere from a few days to 2 weeks off work to recover. I haven’t got an official NHS diagnosis but a few counsellors I spoke to said my symptoms were consistent (wink wink nudge nudge) with OCD but that they weren’t allowed to officially diagnose me.

I’ve tried talking to GPs about it a few times to get referred for diagnosis but as I wouldn’t/couldn’t tell them the exact contents of my intrusive thoughts they weren’t interested. I’ve heard a few horror stories of people with OCD being misunderstood and reported to the police/social work and I’m terrified of that happening as I would most likely lose my job, lots of friends and it would make things really difficult for certain family situations. Can anyone give me some encouragement of good experiences they’ve had with NHS diagnosis? I live in Scotland if that’s important so I believe a referral would go through my community mental health team?

 

I just had a bad episode a few weeks ago and had to stay off work twice. My boss has been great about it, very understanding and encouraging me to take off as much time as I needed. I don’t feel like I need any formal accomodations but I would like to be able to explain to her briefly what has been going on i.e “thank you for being so helpful and understanding. I have suspected OCD/I’m seeking an OCD diagnosis and got badly triggered for a few weeks but feel much better now,” but not sure if I should mention it as I don’t have a formal diagnosis?

[wannabefreeParticipant]

Hi there, to be honest, I am unsure, but, there are self-diagnosis ‘tools’ to help, and they are often buried in self help books. It isn’t formal diagnosis,  but it can at least give us an idea, and then some pointers of what to do for the best.

A book that helped me is ‘feeling good, the new mood therapy’ by a Doctor David burns. It has checklists to help us to figure things out.

Another is ‘Ocd for dummies’ a big yellow book published by wiley. We can get them directly from Amazon, who suggest other books too. Just type ‘OCD’ into the amaxon website searchbar and see what you can find.

I’m in England, to be fair, the nhs is badly stretched here too…

Hope this helps,

Wannabe

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