Five years ago, in a wheelchair, Julia Hum was admitted to a state mental hospital in Massachusetts.
After treatment with targeted deep brain stimulation, she hopes to walk out soon and, for the first time in her adult life, live independently, in her own apartment.
Hum, 24, has severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, which once caused her to hurt herself and even affected her ability to eat and drink.
“My OCD kind of convinced me food and drinks were contaminated,” Hum said. Her thoughts told her things like that her food had parasites or harmful chemicals.
“I was fully aware of how ludicrous these thoughts were, and I desperately wanted to gain weight and eat enough and drink enough and be healthy. But the doubts I had were just so loud,” she said. “They were screaming, and I couldn’t focus on anything else.”
Her heart rate and blood pressure became so erratic, she needed to use a wheelchair to move around. Doctors used a tube that led into her stomach through her nose to give her food and gave her fluids intravenously.