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The biology of obsessions and compulsions
1Child Psychiatry Branch, National Institute of Mental Health.
Scientific American
|March 1, 1989
Abstract:
Samuel Johnson kept darting through doorways; a teen-ager named Sergei is unable to stop washing. Such repetitive, ritualistic behavior can make a person unable to function. The author thinks obsessive-compulsive disorder has biological roots in specific brain structures; she has treated it with certain drugs initially developed as antidepressants.