FREE OF OCD Some of the most famous people throughout history have had a serious mental illness. These include such notables as: Abraham Lincoln, Virginia Woolf, Ludwig van Beethoven, Eugene O'Neill, Leo Tolstoy, Tennessee Williams, Charles Dickens, Vincent Van Gogh, Isaac Newton, Ernest Hemingway, Michelangelo, Winston Churchill, and Theodore Roosevelt, to name just a few. Considering the connection between mental illness and these brilliant minds, it seems ironic that it remains a subject most people rarely talk about, let alone admit to having. Over 57 million Americans have a mental disorder in any given year, yet fewer than 8 million seek treatment for it. The World Health Organization states that 450 million people worldwide experience mental, neurological, or behavioral problems. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a neurological brain disorder which ranks as the fourth most common mental illness. This illness is described by the National Institute of Mental Health as a chronic anxiety disorder which can last throughout a person's life. It can manifest itself in an individual anywhere from an annoying quirky behavior to the full gamut of totally disabling. It usually first appears in teenage to early adult years. One-third of adults develop it in early childhood. It has an incident rate of 1 in 43 people, or 6.3 million men, women, and children in the US, who are afflicted with it. It is indiscriminate, affecting males and females equally, with economic costs estimated at $8.4 billion. A journal article published by The National Institute of Mental Health stated that the President and Congress had declared the 1990's "The Decade of the Brain." It went on to say, "We stand at the threshold of a new era in brain and behavioral sciences. Through research, we will learn even more about mental disorders such as depression, schizophrenia, panic disorder, and obsessive compulsive disorder. And we will be able to use this knowledge to develop new therapies that can help more people overcome mental illness." Nowhere have these words been proven more true than in the research done in the field of Gamma Knife Surgery for OCD. The Gamma Knife Surgery I received demonstrates that we now have the technology available to improve the quality of life for a person severely suffering from the mental disorder OCD. However, in the last several years only a handful of people were fortunate enough to receive this operation. We can no longer stand ideally by while millions of people and their families are made to endure the debilitating pain and stigma associated with mental illness, while we have the resources capable to change their lives. It is imperative that we continue to increase this scientific research and technology until a cure is found for all chemical brain disorders and this treatment becomes readily available to every person who needs or wants it. OCD taints not only the lives of the people who possess it, but also the lives of their families and friends, and every other relationship that touches it. It has been so stigmatized that many people choose to suffer in silence behind closed doors. Contaminated, My Journey Out of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is the story of the OCD illness that consumed me for over 10 years, the struggle I endured to survive it, and the experimental brain surgery that gave me back my life. I wrote this book to let people know that there is hope for an improvement in the quality of life for those lives most severely devastated by the relentless grip of OCD. Contaminated - My Journey Out of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder by Gerry Radano, MSW