For those with obsessive-compulsive disorder, life is filled with rituals. Rima Youssef's began when she was six years old and had to pick up any piece of paper or wrapper she saw on the street – if she didn't, she feared something awful might happen. Early counselling helped, but by 19, she says thoughts were back at a higher intensity.
She had trouble touching door handles, and even her meals. "If I touch this food, my family will get sick, and they might die or something will happen to them and that it's going to be my fault," she thought. Showers, she says, took hours.
At one point, she turned to disinfectant wipes used to clean counters and appliances to clean her face of imaginary mucus and viruses. “It didn’t matter how often or how long I washed my hands, it wasn’t good enough..
..there was a point in time where I've probably spent any time I was awake, taking part in some kind of compulsion” She told CTV News.
She says she spent 18 months in a small bedroom in her parents' basement in Toronto, cleaning herself and her surroundings and taking medications that left her sleepy. "I didn't feel safe in my own brain. I couldn't hug my family.
I couldn't go to work. I couldn't go to school," she says. What set her on the path to freedom, she says, was a novel treatment — a form of brain surgery — to shut down the overactive thoughts and compulsions using focused ultrasound.
"It's black and white. I feel like I have my life again," she says, adding she wants to .
