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Around 2% of the global population struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD. That's roughly 163 million people who go through cycles of obsessions, these unwanted

intrusive thoughts, images or urges, and compulsions, behaviors to decrease the distress

caused by these thoughts.

And Dr. Carolyn Rodriguez says the way it's often portrayed in pop culture,

like the movie as good as it gets starring Jack Nicholson,

a character might do things like,

very ritualized hand washing.

Or you might see an individual

who needs to have everything symmetrical.

Carolyn is a physician at Stanford University studying OCD.

She says these things can all be part of O C. D, but they're often the only ways we see it manifested in the media.

In reality, there's a lot more to it than symmetry and hand washing.

O C. D.C. is also called the doubting disease.

So for example, an individual may be driving down the road

and all of a sudden have an intrusive thought

that, oh, maybe I ran somebody over.

And that thought, as you can imagine,

...