Question

Kathy has a 6-year-old son who attends school near their house. She has terrible thoughts that he will be abducted while at school. Though she tries not to think about these images, she cannot seem to control it. She has found that if she drives around the school three times in a row, the disturbing thoughts and images of her son being abducted seem to go away. Unfortunately, she finds herself doing this for about three hours every school day. Which of the following would we call her behavior of driving around the school?

a) Obsession.
b) Compulsion.
c) Panic attack.
d) Avoidance behavior.

Answer 1

Kathy's act of driving around the school to reduce anxiety about her son being abducted is described as a compulsion. It's a behavioral response to her obsession with her son's safety, commonly seen in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). So the correct answer is option (B).

Step-by-step explanation:

Kathy's behavior of driving around the school to alleviate the disturbing thoughts about her son being abducted is best described as option b) compulsion. This type of behavior is characterized by repetitive actions that an individual feels driven to perform in response to an obsession or as a part of rules that must be applied rigidly.

The purpose of the compulsion is to reduce anxiety or prevent something bad from happening, even though these behaviors are often not realistically connected to the event they are meant to prevent. In Kathy's case, her son's safety is the obsession, while driving around the school to reduce her anxiety is the compulsive behavior.

This is a common pattern seen in individuals dealing with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), where compulsion acts as a temporary relief from the stress caused by obsessive thoughts.