Week 4

This week I aim to focus solely on primary research. I have now finalised each exercise for the workbook and printed them off ready to send to participants. I created a separate work book for my cousin who is helping me co-design this project. The only difference to his is exercise 2, instead of filling in the 'day in a life' sheets for one day only, he will be completing this exercise for 30 days. I have chosen to extent this particular exercise as when studying mental health it is important to compare improvement week by week and not day by day to identify genuine progress.

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Idea 1

My initial idea for this project was to create a journal catered for people with OCD. I personally use a journal every day, I currently have 2, one for my daily tasks and the other for my food consumption. Personally I find them very useful for my life as I can physically see in front of me future events and past situations which I might forget.

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I had my first interview this week, from this I gathered a whole load of knowledge from an individual who has been diagnosed with Pure O. This was very useful as in the 2 and a half hour conversation I was able to understand the illness in depth and have any queries that it had answered. It is also very helpful to work closely with a sufferer as they will correct any wrong terminology that I may have picked up. The most attractive part of the interview for me was when we spoke in depth about natural remedies. This interests me a lot in my personal life therefore may be an avenue that I would like to explore further.

Key things I picked up was:

- Purpose of Omega 3

- Serotonin

- Gut health - Pre & pro bionics

- Magnesium in nuts and seeds - especially pumpkin seeds

- B vitamin deficiency's

- Artificial highs (caffeine, alcohol and drugs)

- Awareness

- Constant checking

- In depth CBT techniques

This interview was very useful, speaking to a person who has experienced OCD first-hand was definitely essential in helping me understand this mental illness. I have gauged through this interview, autobiographies on OCD and through reading up on the matter, that every person has a different experience with Pure O. Their intrusive thoughts differ from each other’s, their process for recovery ranges and also their prediction of why their brain works the way that it does differs. It’s a positive that I have looked at Pure O from multiple angles as I have managed to source different perspectives to the same issue.

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I managed to source participants off of the social media platform Reddit, from there I sent out my pre-made workbooks by email to several people and that I should hopefully get back at the beginning of next week. It is important in mental health recovery that you analysis progress week by week rather than day by day to see genuine progress or deterioration.