The first image you’ll see in An Unquiet Mind is a whirring washing machine. The boring, pedestrian household appliance isn’t exactly nightmare fuel in its own right, but as the scene progresses it takes on a surprising menace. The voice-over describes the recurring thoughts of a person with obsessive-compulsive disorder – he wouldn’t use the washing machine because every time he tried, he imagined his infant daughter trapped within, unable to escape, being battered against the sides until she eventually drowned. The sound of the machine, the drone of music, the narrator’s voice all combine to create in the viewer an approximation of the dread that man must have felt.
That opening moment demonstrates exactly what the film, which was directed by Rachel Immaraj and screened on Sunday at Milwaukee Film’s Dialogues Documentary Festival, endeavors to do: show viewers what it looks like to have OCD.
While the mental health condition has been depicted in movies and television somewhat often, many of those depictions lean heavily into hand-washing and aligning silverware. As the documentary shows, those portrayals can make OCD seem narrower, and sometimes much less serious, than it actually is.
OCD, as exemplified by the two main subjects of this documentary, can be a wrenching experience that manifests in ways someone who hasn’t learned about it wouldn’t expect.
Natasha is a wife and mother who had no experience with OCD until she was married in her 20s. One day, without warning, she was hit with unwanted, intrusive, terrible thoughts, such as harming those she loved. While everyone has occasional unwanted thoughts (e.g. “What if I hit that pedestrian with my car?” or “What if I jumped off this ledge?”), OCD makes these thoughts unrelenting and obsessive. One obsession hit Natasha every time she picked up a kitchen knife – she would imagine stabbing one of her children or herself. In response to the intense anxiety those thoughts produced, she turned to compulsions, such as tapping the table in a particular rhythm, repeating the ritual until it provided temporary relief.
Vinay first remembers a compulsion forming when he was a child. Raised religious, he developed an obsessive fear of being destroyed if he didn’t say his prayers the right way. He would repeat prayers for hours on end until he was certain that he’d said them the correct number of times. As he grew older, his OCD developed into what is called “harm OCD,” the fear of violence happening to those he loved, such as terrorist attacks or shootings. Often, in their worst form, these obsessions would become images of him hurting his family and friends.
The documentary follows Natasha and Vinay, unraveling the emergence of their OCD symptoms, their struggle to cope with them, and ultimately their treatment of them. It devotes a significant amount of time to explaining how exactly OCD works: obsessive thoughts lead to anxiety, which lead to compulsive actions, which lead to temporary relief – and the cycle repeats. According to the National Library of Medicine, the film notes, an OCD patient will spend 5.9 hours occupied with obsessions and 4.6 hours engaging with compulsions on average in one day. The condition can manifest in many ways, such as postpartum OCD and harm OCD.
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The film is replete with examples of the insidious ways OCD operates in a person’s mind, but some of the most painful moments demonstrate how it can affect relationships. Vinay describes lying awake next to a partner, obsessively thinking about strangling them, wondering if they might already be dead, questioning whether he should wake this person up just to make sure they’re alive, and so on for hours on end. Natasha loses precious moments with her children, trapped in an OCD cycle that keeps telling her she is going to hurt them.
While the movie employs interviews with doctors and therapists to offer expert analysis, Natasha and Vinay are the foremost sherpas for the viewer, guiding us through their experiences with OCD. They’re admirably forthcoming about some of the most intensely personal aspects of their lives, explaining it all in such a way that someone with no conception of the condition can grasp its nuances and empathize with those who have it.
Another thing both Natasha and Vinay share – it took them both years to seek treatment. Natasha notes the relief she eventually felt when she finally checked herself into a hospital and received an OCD diagnosis. She finally understood what was happening to her. In one particularly memorable line, Vinay wishes that he could have the 19 years he spent struggling to deal with OCD by himself back.
The film’s website reads: “Thousands of people living with OCD aren’t diagnosed because even many health professionals are unable to recognize nontraditional symptoms. Others are suffering in silence and isolation, reluctant to seek help due to the highly stigmatized nature of their disorder. … By telling Natasha and Vinay’s stories, we aim to empower mental health advocates, health professionals and those affected by OCD.”
If you haven’t had any experience with OCD, An Unquiet Mind will provide an insightful explanation of the condition along with a moving glimpse into its effects. If you do have experience with OCD, either personally or through someone you know, the film, while certainly sobering and heavy, is ultimately a heartening, hopeful look into how others have bravely faced it.
