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Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Finding a Safe Harbor for Your Son with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

We can help your son deal with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (or OCD), an anxiety disorder distinguished by unsolicited and repeating thoughts, feelings, ideas and sensations.

His incessant rotation of unwanted thoughts (obsessions) leads him to try to defuse them by engaging in compulsive activities. Even though he will know that the thoughts or behaviors are disproportionate, he will get only fleeting reprieve by performing the compulsive behaviors.

This can be even more anxiety producing, with apprehension of germs, disease, insistence for symmetry or precision, unwelcome impulse to harm someone, unacceptable religious or sexual thoughts.

His common compulsions may be seen in extraordinarily ritualistic behavior, like continually counting or vocalizing particular words, duplication of activities (turning on/off the stove, entering/leaving a room, open/closing a drawer), hoarding (especially objects with no discernable value), ingesting foods in a particular sequence.

*Note: while sometimes used interchangeably, OCD is not to be confused with OCPD, or Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. An OCD sufferer has unwanted thoughts and knows they are absurd, while an OCPD sufferer believes his thoughts to be natural and appropriate.

Safe Harbor…Throwing a Lifeline to Your Son with OCD

Without treatment, your son might suffer extra troubles (although not all caused directly by OCD): depression, eating or anxiety disorders, substance abuse, a general, poor quality of life, suicidal thoughts (or behavior).

Cognitive behavior therapy is often given together with medication, in helping him tackle his OCD anxieties and fears in healthy ways. Anti-depressants (chiefly ones that interact with the brain’s serotonin production) may also be prescribed and be beneficial in easing OCD symptoms.

Safe Harbor… Helping Troubled Boys Become Men of Character and Integrity

This distinctive, aquatic, Christ-centered residential boarding school is a lifeline for misbehaving boys. Our program is similar to a therapeutic boarding school, but uses maritime training as the therapeutic model for helping turn around at-risk teenagers. Safe Harbor provides a safe, stable alternative to a harsher juvenile program for boys in minor trouble with the law or exhibiting bad behavior. Safe Harbor enables them to learn responsibility and experience behavior modification thru seamanship, mentoring, counseling and spiritual focus, while also attending our in-house school.

Most boys entering the program have had outpatient counseling but without positive results; at Safe Harbor, counseling is offered individually and in groups (led by licensed mental health professionals), and pastoral counseling.

As a water-based program, each boy lives aboard his very own boat and is fully responsible for all the upkeep, with many vocational education opportunities (including carpentry, welding, boat maintenance and repair) that lead to seamanship skills, as well as lifestyle competence (such as skills for job seeking, banking, basic nutrition, grocery shopping and housekeeping). Our structure shows the boys that their negative behavior is leading them into less and less freedom, and teaches a work ethic and positive character traits, such as dependability, good character, self-confidence and maturity.

We believe that education is a life long process and occurs in every facet of life; our curriculum is combined with a unique and creative learning approach that supports students who previously have not experienced success in the academic setting.

Essential principles are taught: problem solving, teamwork, knowledge (of the ocean, and, when they become less self-centered, applicable to the world at large), self-reliance (on their skills, equipment, and the fact the no one will be there to bail you out, either at sea, or in your life decisions), and perseverance, to overcome the challenges that they – as we all – will face in life.