Dr. Casey Halpern

My perspective on OCD may be a little bit different than a psychiatrist who lives and breathes OCD and sees patients every single day with OCD.

I probably take care of three to five patients a year with deep brain stimulation for obsessive compulsive disorder.

So I don't see these patients as routinely, but my laboratory is geared as a researcher.

I'm very focused on trying to improve outcomes of deep brain stimulation for OCD.

So I do feel I have expertise and a perspective to share.

I do feel that as a neurosurgeon, I am...

obligated to better understand where the obsessions in the brain come from and how we can interrupt them to stop the compulsion that's associated with the obsession better than we're actually doing it.

I've been leading an endeavor with a number of collaborators around the country to try to better understand these circuits in the brain.

study them in humans, both invasively and non-invasively.

That would be with an electrode-based surgery, sort of like we do in epilepsy to understand where seizures come from.

We want to understand better where obsessions come from, but we're also working with imaging experts and geneticists to understand OCD at a broader level as well.

I consider OCD to be a spectrum disorder in a way.

And I apologize to those who might feel that I'm using that term incorrectly.

I'm using it in a way to describe patients that have obsessions and even some related compulsions might not meet criteria for OCD.

As a neurosurgeon, I'm really obsessive about safety and compulsive about my surgical procedures.

I think that some aspect of OCD, which we often joke about, but we should consider seriously because people do suffer from this, some aspect of it helps us.

There are famous CEOs that probably have some level of OCD, surgeons and scientists alike.

So perhaps if it can be controlled, it's an asset.

But if it goes awry and is uncontrollable, then it becomes obsessive compulsive disorder.

And I tend to see the patients that are the most severe.