I have been watching The OCD Project on VH1 (well, online using Hulu to search out the location of episodes on the VH1 site: The OCD Project on VH1) and it is fascinating to me!
Quick side note: I’ve been watching some of these episodes during lunch which is its own kind of head trip…but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let me give you a little background about the show and then I can jump into why I think it’s so fascinating. So, in the same fashion as rehab and other addiction/intervention shows, a group of people suffering from severe OCD have been gathered so that they can all work on curing their OCD. The OCD of each patient is different, whether it is the constant washing of hands and other tics to believing that their thoughts will bring harm to others (perhaps even members of their family). In order to combat their OCD, each patient must face their fears by doing the things that they hate to do. This breaks the illusion of control so that they can see that not doing their rituals will not produce negative results: one woman will not kill her son by saying the word cancer, another will not contract HIV by touching a dirty object. And sometimes these patients must go to extreme lengths to face their deepest fears. That is essentially the show – watching these OCD patients do the strange things that they need to do to face their fears and overcome their OCD. (Really fascinating stuff, go check out the show clips if you’re interested.)
Now I get to dive into the really nerdy bits of how this applies to advertising and planning. The reason I think this is so interesting is that those who suffer from OCD, and probably many other illnesses, have their own language, behavior, really their own culture as a community. It is very distinct and therefore very easy to identify.
People with OCD do rituals: tics that make them repeat behavior over and over. Through these rituals, they believe they are controlling their environment. In their minds, if they did not perform these rituals they would lose control and their lives would crumble. The underlying reason they perform rituals is fear – fear that has manifested itself in a very specific way. This fear has moved far beyond the rational or temporary and has become completely irrational. Fear triggers their reactions. Even people with different types or manifestations of OCD can understand this same language and can relate to each other.
This is another part of the program, of course. Being able to see what other people are going through, that they’re facing their own fears and winning the battle against OCD better helps patients to face their own disorder. And in this way, the language and culture of OCD shifts slightly for these patients and they are able to look at it in new ways.
See, fascinating right?!
From our perspective as planners uncovering the attitudes and behaviors of different communities as well as applying these learnings to how we can communicate, it’s important to not only look at the group but what a change in behavior can mean for the group…and hopefully very positive changes can be made.
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