Suggest Treatment For Managing Obsessive-compulsive Disorder

Posted on Fri, 6 Mar 2015

Medically reviewed by Ask A Doctor - 24x7 Medical Review Team

Fri, 6 Mar 2015 Answered on

Fri, 27 Mar 2015 Last reviewed on

Question : could you please describe for me what you understand to be the difference between self-help and therapy. I run a self-help group for OCD sufferers -i experience OCD myself-and have been accused of overstepping my capabilities. I believe i am aware of my boundaries and am helping many people to recover and manage their condition much better.

Answered by Dr. Shubham Mehta (3 hours later)

Brief Answer:
self help is helping onself; therapy is by expert.

Detailed Answer:
Hello
Welcome here.
I appreciate your efforts of helping out people recover from their suffering.

Regarding your query,
Self help is literally helping oneself. In case of mental health conditions, this means that people with similar condition would meet each other. Their mutual goal is to help each other to deal with, if possible to heal or to recover from, this problem. They have their own ways to dealing with a problem and discuss these ways with others to help others in recovery as well.

Therapy is a well defined session given by a mental health professional. The expert will find out the faulty behaviour and tell you ways to change it under his supervision.

Hope this answers your query.

Feel to discuss further.

Thanks.

Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Chakravarthy Mazumdar