Shirley Muscat has one very clear memory of her Holy Communion: that of her constantly tracing her earlobes to check she had not lost her gift earrings. She could not focus on anything else, much less enjoy the day, because she was anxiously worried that her earrings would fall off.

“For as long as I remember I suffered from an obsessive compulsive disorder,” says Ms Muscat, 42, from Attard. “I’ve had it all my life.”

Whenever she heard people exclaim how much they wanted to win the lottery, in her heart she always said: “I don’t want to win the lottery, I just want to get rid of my thoughts.”

Her childhood memories are riddled with recollections of her obsessive compulsive disorder. “I was scared of germs and contamination and terrified that I would catch some disease, so for a long time I used to wash my hands constantly,” she says in a soft voice.

At school she ate her sandwiches without actually touching the bread by wrapping the food in napkins.

I was convinced I was a dangerous person, and used to repeatedly think of nothing else

“The other children used to be puzzled by my behaviour and ask me questions but I always tried to hide it.”

Church confession was another trauma for her: week in week out, she would fret that she was not confessing everything. “So I used to make up other sins, just to make sure I covered everything.”

As she grew older, her performance in school examinations started to be affected – she was so obsessed with getting everything right, and checking and re-checking her answers that invariably she never managed to finish on time.

She started to suffer from acute tension headaches but due to lack of mental health awareness, her parents always brushed it off as anxiety. “I knew deep down that my behaviour was not normal – I felt like ...,” she trails off. After a short while she says: “I felt like a freak.”

When eventually she started working – initially at De La Rue, the bank note printing facility – she was constantly being reprimanded because of her slow performance.

“I was scared that I would miss out on some faults and obsessively checked and re-checked things, which slowed me down immensely.”

She never spoke about her thoughts to anyone, not even to her husband, who, like all her close relatives thought she was just a born worrier.

She had her daughter at 24, and that was the first time she plucked up courage to speak out about her anxieties. However, it was written off as a physical problem: she was sent for thyroid tests and when the results were negative, she was assured that all was fine.

“In fact it was the opposite – I then started focusing my obsessions on to my children. If they got a bump or a bruise, I had to rush over to hospital and insist on them getting X-rays to be completely certain that everything was fine.”

It was at this point that she started suffering from her worst obsession: “I was convinced I was a dangerous person, and used to repeatedly think of nothing else.”

At long last, aged 28, she was watching a television show and a psychiatrist started talking about the symptoms of OCD. “I was stunned: here was someone finally describing me”.

She acted on the ray of light and went to see the psychiatrist. “The first thing he did was assure me I was not dangerous and that I was not the only one,” she says. He prescribed her medication. She did not get better immediately, because sometimes finding the right pills takes time.

It was her impatience for a quick cure that attracted her to an advert of a foreign spiritual leader residing in Malta who claimed to be able to “heal everything”. She immediately set up an appointment – and one session turned into almost five a week. “I became obsessed – rather than being healed my OCD got worse,” she says.

Happy to pocket her money, he never pointed this out to her and instead actively encouraged her to ditch her medication. “And I flushed everything away.”

That was when she hit her lowest point, she became manic. She spent a day running around in taxis, dishing out tens of liri as tips. The next day, she did not send her children to school. Her husband was immediately alerted and rushed home to find her locked up in the bathroom.

“I wouldn’t come out, in the end he had to call the police.” Ms Muscat was admitted to Mount Carmel and had to stay there for about a week, until doctors gradually eased her on to medication again.

Gradually, with the help of medicine, professional therapists and the support of her family, she started to piece her life together. Her major turning point was when she attended a self-help group for people suffering from mental health illness at the Richmond Foundation.

“A man stood up and said that he suffered from OCD. It was the first time I had met a sufferer like me and I remember saying to myself: if he can talk about it, then I can.”

She became a very active volunteer at the Richmond Foundation, and eventually moved to become a course facilitator, leading self-help groups on OCD. Today, she sits on the foundation’s board of governors and is one of the few people in Malta who speaks openly about OCD.

Her husband and two children are very supportive of her relentless energy to create more awareness on mental health illnesses.

Today, Shirley Muscat has an aura of serenity. She works as a make-up artist – and has no qualms about making physical contact with people.

“I still have my days: this is like suffering from asthma, but I’ve have learnt not to fight my thoughts and to be more compassionate with myself,” she says.

Before she reached out her hand for help, she felt as if she lived in the corridors of her own unhappy thoughts. “I am now at peace. I have my own shortcomings of course, but I feel like I can enjoy life,” she says.

She has finally won her lottery.

Do you think you suffer from OCD?

Symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder can be triggered at any age – even in children, said psychiatrist Anton Grech, head of Psychiatry at Mount Carmel Hospital.

“Perfectionism is one of the risk factors so persons who are perfectionists need to be on the lookout for emergence of symptoms more than others and it is important that children are not encouraged to be perfectionists,” he said.

The earlier the treatment, the more effective it will be. Research has shown that sufferers generally take some seven years to seek treatment after the development of their symptoms. “Most are ashamed to talk about their symptoms but professionals see a lot of sufferers with these conditions, and they will never be shocked by the symptoms and are completely non-judgmental,” he said.

Dr Grech recommends that a sufferer should first speak to a person he trusts. A family doctor, a psychologist or contacting Richmond Foundation would also be a positive first step. Treatment consists of medication, talking therapy or a combination of both, depending on the individual and the symptoms.

The Sunday Times of Malta is running a mental health awareness campaign.