Ask HN: Has anyone greatly reduced their OCD?

[arjun_tina]

Hello HN!

I'm working on a project that helps people suffering from OCD. To do this, I'm sending out interview questions to people that have reduced/eliminated their OCD. I will tease out the patterns in this data to highlight the most effective approaches and the specifics behind them. This way, people still suffering from OCD can treat themselves faster and more effectively.

If you have successfully reduced/eliminated your OCD symptoms and are willing to answer a few questions about the specific approaches you took, please email me at [e-mail].

If you're interested in hearing more about the project, feel free to email me as well.

Thanks!

[smt88]

Why do you think your survey will give you better data than the hundreds of clinical studies that have assessed OCD treatments? Why don't you just read the literature that already exists?

[arjun_tina]

That's a great question.

1. Clinical studies move slowly. For example, it's taken years to get approval for psychedelic research, but if there was a crowd-sourced database, people could have submitted their own experiences far quicker. 2. Clinical studies don't touch everything. There might be many people that have tried treatments that have very little data surrounding them (for example, probiotic treatments). 3. Clinical studies have small sample sizes for different trials (aka 100 people here, 100 people there). A crowd-sourced platform could have way more data points. 4. You can't create "mix and match" tests. A trial is very specific to one thing, but what if someone has mixed three different modalities and found that to be helpful?

This wasn't clear in my post, but I want to start with a survey and then move into a crowd-sourced model.