11/19/2023 0 Comments Define irresistible![]() On the other hand, the types of behavior that become compulsive differ greatly between disorders, and investigating them as one cross-diagnostic construct could lead to generalizations that may hamper rather than advance our understanding. In the general population, about 10% of people have OCD-related sub-threshold symptoms that include compulsive behaviors, and some authors have even suggested that normal repetitive daily behaviors such as children’s bedtime rituals have compulsive elements (Denys, 2014 Fineberg et al., 2013).Ī question then arises-does the shared phenomenology of compulsive behaviors across disorders indicate that there are shared cognitive and neural mechanisms driving them? If there are, investigating these mechanisms would be important for many disorders in psychiatry and psychology and may lead to new avenues for cross-diagnostic treatments. Compulsive behaviors are relevant even beyond psychiatric disorders. Patients feel compelled to act out these behaviors-from now on referred to as ‘compulsive behavior.’ A range of compulsive behaviors cut across different diagnostic boundaries, including substance and behavioral addictions, obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, eating disorders, and neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease (Allen, King, & Hollander, 2003 Flessner, Knopik, & McGeary, 2012 Grant & Potenza, 2006 Le Moal & Koob, 2007 Leeman & Potenza, 2012 Rothemund et al., 2011). At a certain stage of the addiction process, however, these reasons no longer drive the behavior and many patients struggle to understand why they keep using despite an increasing awareness of the destructive impact of the substance or behavioral addiction (Kennett, Matthews, & Snoek, 2013).Īlthough the behaviors themselves differ in many aspects across these disorders, there seems to be a motivational drive behind them all that defies simple explanations. Addicted patients can often explain why they started using the substance of abuse or betting on electronic gaming machines (e.g., pleasure, peer pressure, stress relief). In obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), patients often report that they realize the nonsensical nature of their compulsions (e.g., washing hands 20 times) and the disruptive effects the compulsions have on their life, but cannot always give a reason for why they do them (Denys, 2011). In many psychiatric or psychopathological disorders, patients repetitively engage in behaviors that are disruptive for themselves and their environment. Having a more unified definition for compulsive behavior will make its meaning precise and explicit, and therefore more transferable and testable across clinical and non-clinical populations. ![]() The elements most applicable, cross-diagnostically, resulted in this definition: Compulsive behavior consists of repetitive acts that are characterized by the feeling that one ‘has to’ perform them while one is aware that these acts are not in line with one’s overall goal. Within the definitions, we separated three types of descriptive elements: phenomenological, observational and explanatory. We searched PubMed for articles in human psychiatric research with ‘compulsive behavior’ or ‘compulsivity’ in the title that focused on the broader concept of compulsivity-returning 28 articles with nine original definitions. ![]() This article aims to help progress the definition of what constitutes compulsive behavior, cross-diagnostically, by analyzing different definitions in the psychiatric literature. A vague conceptualization makes compulsivity a moving target encompassing a fluctuating variety of behaviors, which is unlikely to improve the new dimension-based psychiatric or psychopathology approach. ![]() However, no consensus exists about the precise meaning of ‘compulsivity,’ creating confusion in the field and hampering comparison across psychiatric disorders. Compulsive tendencies are a central feature of problematic human behavior and thereby are of great interest to the scientific and clinical community. ![]()
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