Facing Down OCD: A Teenager Speaks Up

Ben Shapiro is a 17-year-old who’s written a remarkable piece for Psychology Today about the OCD that took over his life five years ago, and the battle to get that life back.

Ben is candid and articulate about what it felt like to be in the grip of obsessive terrors, and how his compulsive rituals alleviated those fears, giving him what clinicians who treat kids with OCD call a “just-right feeling.” As Ben puts it: “It’s like a drug for people with OCD; we will do whatever it takes to get that reassurance, no matter how embarrassing our rituals.”

Ben also interviewed two anxiety experts about OCD and the treatment for it, which in his case included medication and cognitive behavioral therapy. Ben was helped by both, he writes, but it’s the CBT, with Dr. Jerry Bubrick at the Child Mind Institute, that he credits with bringing him down from the ledge. His description of how it works it is the best I’ve seen.

Ben is also very articulate about his reasons for writing this piece, as part of our annual Speak Up for Kids campaign, aimed at reducing the stigma around mental illness that isolates families struggling with it. His words are more powerful than mine—I hope you’ll read the piece.

I decided to step forward and “speak up” on the chance that hearing my story might help even one other kid. OCD made me feel alienated in a world I was sure only I understood. Had I realized how false that was, that there are millions of us out there, I might have felt a little less alone.