LATEST ISSUES 17th February, 2026
- Mark Stock
- Feb 17
- 4 min read
Today is a notable anniversary.
It has been exactly one year to the day since my daughter Meg first engaged in therapy with Dr Matt Sopp, addressing the most serious and debilitating aspect of her mental health issues, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
Meg’s appointment with Matt yesterday was her THIRTY-NINTH psychotherapy session!
Most people believe that Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is just a collection of odd habits like excessive handwashing, turning light switches on or off multiple times or even arranging books on a shelf in colour-coded order. OCD is often much more than being overly conscientious or tidy. It is a deeply rooted attempt to create order in a world that feels chaotic, scary and unpredictable.
The belief that OCD just means being meticulous about cleanliness or organisation remains a common myth. That same myth substantially diminishes the real challenges faced by those diagnosed with the condition.
Meg has a particularly severe form of OCD. Her rituals aren’t just expressed in being meticulous about cleanliness and organisation. Meg’s rituals are often horrific, resulting in self-mutilation including face and neck friction burns and lacerations and, more recently, an auricular perichondritis (or ‘pinna edema'), a significant ear injury.
I posted the account of another, earlier incident that happened on the bank holiday Monday, 26th May, 2025 here at this blog https://www.fourandtwentydeadcrows.com/post/latest-issues-28th-may-2025. The following is an extract
‘…As we sat and waited in A&E, I ruminated upon all of the events outlined above and had plenty of time to reflect upon and to question the long line of events that had led to this moment.
Here was Meg, overwhelmed and defeated, wishing that she could be ‘dead’. Her face was bloodied, a consequence of her OCD rituals, the repeated aggressive rubbing at her head resulting in friction burns and cuts, old wounds and new ones partially healed. Her hair that hasn’t been washed since 2021, hacked at with scissors so that she looks more like a concentration camp internee than the brilliant, beautiful girl that she really is and suffering from poor hygiene because she cant wash properly, attired haphazardly because she can’t dress properly. And so terribly tired because she can't even rest her head on a pillow without ritualizing, without going through a convoluted process that means she can make as many as 30 repeated aborted attempts to rest her head. God help her if whenever something ‘goes wrong’ with her hair at any time of the day and she is overcome by compulsions.
And there was so, so much more that I could have ruminated on.
I am her dad. I have to watch her suffer. Meg hasn’t got a life. She is denied the simple things that most people take for granted. She spends most of her time at home, with me, isolated and horribly diminished.
And I think of those whose job it is to care, the clinicians and leadership staff charged with responsibility for healthcare. I think of those who are responsible for negligence, often wilful, gross and unfathomably irresponsible negligence.
It makes me fucking incandescent with rage. I am like a steam engine under so much rivet-busting pressure, or like a nuclear reactor in meltdown, leaking phosphorus-bright radiation through bursting seams.
And I become hellishly focused on holding those same clinicians and leadership staff to account, like a forest fire about to raze an entire continent, a Mount Everest-sized asteroid on collision course with the Earth…’
The main psychological treatment for OCD is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) including exposure and response prevention (ERP).
What is Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)?
Exposure and Response Prevention, commonly referred to as ERP, is a therapy that encourages you to face your fears and let obsessive thoughts occur without ‘putting them right’ or ‘neutralising’ them with compulsions.
Exposure therapy starts with confronting items and situations that cause anxiety, but anxiety that you feel able to tolerate. After the first few times, you will find your anxiety does not climb as high and does not last as long. You will then move on to more difficult exposure exercises.
ERP is by far the most commonly used therapy in many other parts of the world, but here in the UK the treatment recommended is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. The behavioural aspect of CBT naturally includes elements of ERP but in addition, CBT also offers the benefit of cognitive therapy, so is a far more in depth package than ERP alone.
NICE guidelines on Treating Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Body Dysmorphic Disorder in Adults, Children and Young People cite
'If you have OCD and your symptoms are very severe, you should be offered combined treatment of CBT with ERP, together with an SSRI.'
Latest NICE recommendations are covered under
Obsessive-compulsive disorder and body dysmorphic disorder: treatment
Clinical guideline Reference number:CG31
‘1.5.1 Initial treatment options
Adults
The intensity of psychological treatment has been defined as the hours of therapist input per patient. By this definition, most group treatments are defined as low intensity treatment (less than 10 hours of therapist input per patient), although each patient may receive a much greater number of hours of therapy.’
Previous NICE guidelines have suggested 30 hours of treatment and sometimes more than 50. Sometimes, OCD is so severe that a patient requires specialist treatment.
Specialist treatment is freely available through the NHS at one of several clinics in England
Today’s milestone confirms the severity of Meg’s OCD.
That milestone also condemns CAMHS, Bramblys Drive, Basingstoke and CMHT, The Bridge Centre for their clinical neglect and managerial incompetence while attending to my daughter’s mental health issues. If Meg had been offered the appropriate clinical care at the time when she was first admitted into the CAMHS service in December, 2018 or at the time when she was first admitted into the CMHT service in March, 2022 then she would likely have been spared YEARS of horrific suffering!
And I am still fucking incandescent with rage!
Comments