Howard Hughes and OCD

"The Aviator" portrays Howard Hughes as an aviation pioneer, an eccentric billionaire industrialist and a Hollywood film mogul. He is a modern marvel indeed.

Leonardo DiCaprio is amazing. Although he has a baby face, his performance in this movie is so convincing that at a certain point, I believed he IS this genius who tragically has OCD. To tell the truth, I've never thought he was capable of doing so till I watched it.

What shocks me most is how terrible the OCD could be and how it kills a genius slowly and cruelly. Howard Hughes himself struggled all his life with OCD. However, at that time, people knew very little about this mental disorder. Without modern psychiatric treatment, it's very difficult to get over it only by his own will. It was until the end of twentieth century that advances in pharmacology, neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and learning theory have allowed us to reach a more therapeutically useful conceptualization of OCD.

In the United States, 1 in 50 adults currently has OCD, and twice that many have had it at some point in their lives. So what is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)?

Obsessive-Compulsive Foundation wrote:
Worries, doubts, superstitious beliefs all are common in everyday life. However, when they become excessive then a diagnosis of OCD is made. In OCD, it is as though the brain gets stuck on a particular thought or urge and just can't let go. People with OCD often say the symptoms feel like a case of mental hiccups that won't go away. OCD is a medical brain disorder that causes problems in information processing. It is not your fault or the result of a "weak" or unstable personality.

Before the arrival of modern medications and cognitive behavior therapy, OCD was generally thought to be untreatable. Most people with OCD continued to suffer, despite years of ineffective psychotherapy. Today, luckily, treatment can help most people with OCD. Although OCD is usually completely curable only in some individuals, most people achieve meaningful and long-term symptom relief with comprehensive treatment.

Typical OCD Symptoms:
Common Obsessions: Contamination fears of germs, dirt, etc.; Imagining having harmed self or others; Imagining losing control or aggressive urges; Intrusive sexual thoughts or urges; Excessive religious or moral doubt; Forbidden thoughts; A need to have things "just so"; A need to tell, ask, confess.
Common Compulsions: Washing, repeating, checking, touching, counting, ordering/arranging, hoarding or saving, praying.

I used to be indulged in a TV series called Monk. Adrian Monk is a detective in San Francisco. He has OCD as well. I found that some of the behaviors happened to me too. Just as the theme song sings...

It's a jungle out there
Disorder and confusion everywhere
No one seems to care
Well I do
Hey, who's in charge here?
It's a jungle out there
Poison in the very air we breathe
Do you know what's in the water that you drink?
Well I do, and it's amazing
People think I'm crazy, 'cause I worry all the time
If you paid attention, you'd be worried too
You better pay attention
Or this world we love so much might just kill you
I could be wrong now, but I don't think so
It's a jungle out there

To learn more about Howard Hughes's life, visit Howard Hughes: A chronology. To learn more about OCD, visit National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).