Name of the illness in which a person becomes obsessed with cleanliness

[Tom]

Hi

Could you please tell me the name of the illness in which the patient becomes obsessed with cleanliness--keeps washing his hands, etc?

Tom

[Conchita]

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)?

[Tom]

Many thanks, Conchita

Have you ever met a person like this? Do they shake hands?

Tom

[Conchita]

I haven't personally met anybody like that, but I imagine they try to refrain from any kind of physical contact.

PS: The expression 'compulsive hand washer' seems to be widely used, too.

[Abr4xii]

Howie Mandel is OCD..if you ever see him being introduced to another person
he always makes a fist and bumps knuckles and never shakes hands.

[Conchita]

Looking up 'Howie Mandel' (sorry, but I'd never heard of him before), I found another name for this disorder: mysophobia (fear of germs).

[Yankee]

Hi Tom

Have you ever seen the movie As Good As It Gets? Jack Nicholson played an obsessive-compusive in that movie. I'm no expert about this disorder, but my guess is that Nicholson probably researched the disorder so that he could portray it well in the film. I thought his performance was excellent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Good_as_It_Gets

Scroll down to the symptoms in the following link. Most of them were clearly portrayed by Nicholson in the film.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive-compulsive_disorder
_________________
Amy
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ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English

[hagen5690]

[prezbucky]

Tom

I knew someone with OCD.

Her particular hang-up was food -- she was absolutely obsessed with (and fearful of) the ingredients in food.

She once saw me eating some soup (canned soup) and almost lost it.... something about how the metal in the can would poison me, and about all the sodium in the soup. She wasn't just posing an argument and acting a little bit concerned -- this was important to the degree that someone would feel for a missing child.

She taped candy bar wrappers to her walls -- I suppose as an act of defiance and a reminder of what not to eat.

She was neither bulimic nor anorexic -- what she ate, she kept down, and she did eat.

She was just EXTREMELY particular.
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Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.