O.C.D ft. Steven Ogg, by Chris

Following on from my blog post around working with the Youth Café with Sussex NHS Partnership Trust as a lived experience advisor, I recently came across a short film on YouTube that wanted to represent what Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) can look like for an individual.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAfdRMeZkWQ

O.C.D. with Steven Ogg was unsurprisingly recommended to me from social media algorithms. I’ve never really watched anything that has accurately portrayed OCD and this has been frustrating at times. Media can sometimes share misinformation around mental health with tips, suggestions and recommendations, so I would always encourage anyone to read content online with a curious eye and ensure that what you are reading has evidence and genuine experience behind it.

Nevertheless, content online can also be highly valuable, share hope and positivity and promote positive well-being suggestions for others to use in their daily life.

The short film with Steven Ogg that I watched the other day wasn’t visual content that promoted self-care tips or coping strategies for someone’s mental health but more the case of attempting to depict what it is like to experience OCD. I felt that it did a great job at fulfilling this. Of course any film or video series cannot 100% fit someone’s experience of OCD or any mental health condition for that matter. Each individual is going to have different views and personal experiences of mental health. It is why I think that treatment and support needs to be more individualised and for care plans to be holistically made in healthcare services.

O.C.D. gave an accurate picture of what it can be like for someone to live with OCD and intrusive thoughts. OCD from my experience can be intoxicating and power over you with the compulsive thoughts and feelings that it tells you. It is a very sneaky illness from my experience and without managing and consciously challenging these OCD thoughts and behaviours it can easily take over and overwhelm someone into a paralysed state in the worst of times. I think that O.C.D. did a good job of this and showed how disabling a mental health condition can be for someone.

These types of short films and media content showcase what it can be like to live with a severe mental health condition and I feel that if more content like this is produced and shared then I hope for better awareness and understanding of OCD and mental health as a whole.

Relating this back to lived experience involvement is highly relevant. I am sure that the short film had lived experience input to develop it more accurately than without someone that has not had to go through this experience. Lived experience is highly valuable and I think that from my personal involvement with the Youth Café

and in other advisory groups that I have been lucky enough to be a part of, these projects and positions should be more frequent.

As a lived experience advisor I hope that my involvement and an increase in more individuals coming forward to take part in lived experience roles will create and develop healthcare services to be more supportive and listen to what actually would help. I know that from having support from lived experience support workers this has allowed me to be further understood and feeling more heard as an individual knowing that I can talk to someone that has gone through similar times and come out the other end stronger.

The more lived experience input we can have the better I believe that support approaches will be. I hope that lived experience can be taken as a higher priority in the future and for there to be priority with patient involvement in any healthcare service.

Thank you for reading,

Chris

Youth Café Advisor