Specialized OCD care across Saskatchewan. Not an emergency service. Use local emergency services for immediate danger.
The content of OCD can be highly personal. SaskOCD theme guides focus on common compulsions and treatment mechanisms without trying to provide certainty about the feared question.
Harm, relationships, contamination, morality, sexuality, memory and responsibility can all become targets.
Checking, reassurance, avoidance, rumination and neutralizing create temporary relief.
The next question often arrives because certainty was treated as necessary.
Use theme guides for recognition: the treatment target remains the compulsive response, not proving the feared question false.
Theme labels can help people recognize patterns, but they are not separate disorders. A person may have several themes over time, and the treatment principles often overlap.
Fears of causing harm, losing control, responsibility for danger, or being the kind of person who could do something terrible.
Persistent doubt about feelings, compatibility, attraction, partner qualities or whether a relationship is right.
Concerns about contamination, illness, spread, disgust or responsibility, often followed by washing, cleaning or avoidance.
Religious, moral or ethical doubt that becomes organized around confession, reassurance, mental review or perfect certainty.
Unwanted sexual thoughts, images, sensations or doubts followed by checking, avoidance, comparison or reassurance.
Repeated review of past events, uncertainty about memory, guilt, confession and attempts to determine exactly what happened.
Repeated attempts to prove that a mistake, accident, omission or responsibility has been handled with complete certainty.
Internal rituals such as reviewing, analysing, testing, neutralizing and self-reassurance; often called Pure-O.
Knowing that other people have a similar theme can reduce shame, but recovery does not depend on proving that every thought fits a named subtype. Treatment asks what triggers uncertainty, what compulsions follow, and how those responses can change.
Just-right experiences, perfectionism, sensorimotor or somatic focus, health-related obsessions, existential themes and mixed presentations can all be assessed through the same process-focused lens.
Start with what has been happening. SaskOCD can help determine whether specialized OCD treatment is an appropriate next step.