Research
Advance the science of OCD.We support rigorous, high-impact research that deepens understanding and accelerates progress toward earlier diagnosis, more effective and personalized treatments, and better outcomes.
Explore ResearchFoundation for OCD Research, Care, and Education
Advancing OCD research. Expanding access. Transforming education.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder is common, serious, treatable—and still profoundly misunderstood.
Millions of people live with OCD, yet too many spend years without an accurate diagnosis, without access to evidence-based treatment, and without the benefit of scientific progress that should be improving their lives.
FORCE was created to change that.
We are building a stronger OCD ecosystem by connecting research, clinical care, education, and lived experience—so that scientific progress reaches the people it was created to serve.
ResearchCareEducationLived experience
OCD By The Numbers
OCD is not rare, trivial, or niche.
Up to 10 million Americans likely live with OCD, yet many never receive an accurate diagnosis or evidence-based treatment.
10MAmericans may live with OCD.
1 in 6Estimated to receive a diagnosis.
2%Documented as receiving ERP.
14-17Years to accurate diagnosis on average.
IOCDF findings suggest that only a fraction of people with OCD are accurately identified and even fewer receive Exposure and Response Prevention, the gold-standard treatment. Public understanding remains severely limited as well. That is unacceptable.
Why FORCE Exists
OCD deserves better.
Public misconceptions remain widespread. Access to clinicians trained to recognize and treat OCD remains deeply unequal. And despite the disorder’s prevalence, severity, and disability burden, major scientific questions remain unanswered.
We need research, treatment, and awareness to work together.
The problem is not simply that we need more research, more treatment, or more awareness. We need them to work together.
One Mission. Three Connected Paths.
Research, Care, and Education move farther when they move together.
FORCE advances OCD research, care, and education together because lasting progress in one depends on progress in the others.
Care
Make evidence-based treatment easier to reach.FORCE works to close the distance between what science has shown can help and what people can realistically receive.
Explore CareEducation
Change how OCD is understood.FORCE creates and supports accurate, accessible, science-backed, lived-experience-informed education to improve recognition, reduce stigma, and strengthen clinical knowledge.
Explore EducationWhy Connect Them?
Because the gaps reinforce one another.
FORCE was built around a model of integrated change: science informing care, care generating new questions for science, education helping both reach more people, and lived experience strengthening every stage.
Research without translation leaves discoveries trapped in journals.
Care without education leaves too many people undiagnosed, misdiagnosed, or misdirected.
Education without science risks becoming outdated or incomplete.
All three are stronger when people living with OCD help shape them.
Science should reach people.
Scientific discovery matters because of what it can make possible: earlier recognition, better treatments, more informed care, greater quality of life, and less unnecessary suffering.
But discovery alone is not enough. Knowledge has to move from laboratories and journals to clinicians, healthcare systems, families, schools, policymakers, and communities.
FORCE exists to shorten the distance between scientific discovery and people’s lives.
Built with lived experience, not simply for it.
FORCE is informed by people who know severe OCD and serious mental illness through firsthand personal experience, family and caregiving experience, or both.
Lived experience is a source of knowledge that can identify unmet needs, strengthen research, improve care, make education more accurate, and keep institutions accountable.
Building What Comes Next
Building the future of OCD research, care, and education.
FORCE is beginning with practical, high-impact work across our three mission areas.
- treatment-access initiatives designed to reduce barriers to evidence-based OCD care;
- support for rigorous, high-impact OCD research and stronger connections between researchers and communities;
- public and professional education, training, outreach, and science communication;
- community partnerships that bring resources beyond traditional specialty settings; and
- future convenings that bring researchers, clinicians, advocates, families, trainees, policymakers, funders, and people with lived experience into the same room.
Help build what comes next.
OCD has gone underrecognized, undertreated, misunderstood, and underfunded for far too long. Invest in better science. Better access. Better understanding. Better lives.