The holiday season has arrived and retail stores are breaking out their dancing Santas, light up reindeer and Rudolph socks to help their customers dress for the holiday shopping season. But, one article of holiday bling is ruffling the carefully groomed feathers of people who suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and the mental health professionals who help them.
Retail giant, Target is being called out on the internet for selling a Christmas sweater that makes a pun out of the disorder’s name.
No matter what you think of Target's #OCD sweater, learn about the REAL condition: https://t.co/DLRuG0kbrC pic.twitter.com/RzD5zPsL0x
— Michigan Medicine (@umichmedicine) November 13, 2015
The Mayo Clinic defines OCD as, “characterized by unreasonable thoughts and fears (obsessions) that lead you to do repetitive behaviors (compulsions).”
The National Institute of Mental Health claims that, approximately 2.2 million American adults suffer the disorder.
People have taken to Twitter to protest the selling of the sweater with tweeters saying that they are not amused by the play on words.
Hey @target? How about we NOT sell shirts mocking mental illness? https://t.co/QcKWCDs2O4
— Brynna (@brynna42) November 2, 2015
https://twitter.com/skeletondna/status/664224150664454144
https://twitter.com/DPoolePR/status/663488201328345088
Target is standing by its product and saying that they did not mean to offend anybody and that the sweater is not even exclusive to Target, as it is available from many online stores.
There is no official word on whether or not the controversy has caused sale of the sweater to increase, but many of the tweets and most of the news articles feature a picture of the contentious attire.
Not all people suffering from OCD were offended by the shirt. Transverso Media editor Weston David Pagano tweeted,” As someone who has OCD I don’t see any reason to be angry about @Target’s “offensive” sweater – it’s perfectly even!
[HuffPo] Featured image via Twitter
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