Sites celebrate 15th annual OCD Awareness Week
10/17/23 07:30:pm
OCD Awareness Week takes place each October, with the first official observance held in 2009. This year, Rogers locations nationwide celebrated OCD Awareness Week from October 8 through 14, raising awareness, reducing stigma, and inspiring hope in our patients and their communities.
As always, Rogers teams got into the spirit of the week with a wide variety of fun activities for patients, staff, and members of the community. Below, a few sites share the many ways they marked the week.
Appleton
The Appleton clinic took an interactive approach to the week, with team members and patients encouraged to normalize intrusive thoughts by adding their own to the intrusive thoughts board and taking part in a guessing game that asked participants to determine which intrusive thoughts are from people with OCD and which are from people who do not have an OCD diagnosis. The twist? You can’t tell the difference between the two!
Additionally, the team celebrated the week by wearing teal, mismatched clothing, or both throughout the week.
Philadelphia
At the Philadelphia clinic, everyone was encouraged to wear teal throughout the week, including customized shirts for team members on Thursday, with participants collecting a raffle ticket each day they wore teal to be entered in a prize drawing. Additionally, the week was packed with other activities for patients: an art show featuring submissions that depict each patient’s experience with OCD, creating inspirational sidewalk chalk art as part of the #ChalkItUpToValues campaign, a screening and discussion for “UNSTUCK: An OCD Kids Movie,” and the opportunity to create Not Alone Notes.
San Diego
The San Diego team participated in spirit week dress-up days and a scavenger hunt. Additionally, patients and team members had an open mic day, lunch, and were encouraged to attend a community movie night sponsored by the clinic featuring the film “As Good as It Gets,” in which the main character struggles with OCD.
Tampa
With the goal of each day representing an OCD symptom, the Tampa team celebrated with a packed week of activities. Monday was mismatched hairstyle and/or makeup day; on Tuesday patients assigned an exposure to their behavior specialist or therapist; Wednesday was wear teal day as well as an opportunity for those in the OCD program to write a letter to OCD about how it interferes with their life; Thursday was mismatched clothes day; and Friday wrapped up the week with face paintings that featured words to describe how each participant feels about OCD.
