He was on The Howard Stern Show<\/em>, spiraling into a panic attack because he didn\u2019t want to open the door. He just couldn\u2019t get past touching the doorknob and leaving the studio, and what he didn\u2019t realize is he no longer was thinking that: the words came out before he could stop them. It was aired on Stern\u2019s show, Mandel left the studio, and found himself contemplating his career and life on the busy New York City street. His thoughts and anxiety getting the best of him, the train of thought broke finally when a stranger walked up and said: \u201cI just heard you on Stern. Me too.\u201d<\/p>\n Brian Smith.<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt was the first time I connected with somebody else,\u201d Mandel told Fortune <\/em>in a lengthy interview. \u201cIt was the first comfort I got, which I didn\u2019t have for 40-some odd years\u2014it was to articulate, explain, and understand what was going on in here,\u201d he said while tapping on his noggin <\/em>while sitting before a wall display of perfectly aligned fedoras.<\/p>\n That accidental confession, followed by the encounter with the stranger on the sidewalk, set in motion a two-decade arc that now finds Mandel as the public face of NOCD, a virtual therapy company that has grown into the largest telehealth provider specializing in OCD treatment. NOCD, last valued at nearly $270 million in 2024, currently provides at least a million therapy sessions annually, with more than 140 million people able to access it through their insurance. This past January, the company announced its acquisition of Rebound Health, a PTSD-focused platform, launching a parent brand called Noto, named after the AI-powered software that has fueled its growth.<\/p>\n Mandel, born in 1955, says he has no recollection of living without OCD. The rituals, the compulsions, the germ fears, none of it had a name until his mid-40s, when his wife of 20 years gave him an ultimatum: you either go figure out how to do this differently, or we can\u2019t live in this world. He was making her sanitize and accommodate. \u201cI didn\u2019t know I had OCD,\u201d he said. \u201cI just knew life was hell.\u201d<\/p>\n NOCD<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n He\u2019s precise about what the disorder actually is, and what it isn\u2019t. When people approach him and say they\u2019re \u201ca little OCD\u201d because they like things in order, he doesn\u2019t let it slide. \u201cIt\u2019s like saying I just got a touch of that cancer,\u201d he said. \u201cYou don\u2019t have a touch of OCD.\u201d What it actually looks like, he explained, is washing your hands until the top layer of skin is gone\u2014going in because the handshake felt clammy, washing, turning off the water, turning it back on, washing again, scalding, again, again\u2014until two hours have passed and you\u2019ve missed the appointment. \u201cYou can\u2019t fucking stop it. And it just becomes this f\u2014ing nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n Billy Bob Thornton knows that nightmare too, and he didn\u2019t have a name for it either. Growing up, the actor said he had no idea what OCD was, and instead, thought he invented it. As a kid, he would count to a 100 five times in his head before his father\u2019s car pulled into the driveway\u2014a ritual of control in a home that didn\u2019t offer much of it. Decades later, he bonded with Warren Zevon over the disorder after the legendary singer-songwriter watched Thornton open and close a mailbox three times and simply said, \u201cYou have it too, huh?\u201d<\/p>\n The two men were born in the mid-\u201950s and were shaped by a generation that had no vocabulary for what was happening to them. They eventually found each other through an ad. Thornton saw Mandel\u2019s NOCD campaign and called Mandel, who assumed it was about an acting role. \u201cHe\u2019s gonna give me a part in Landman<\/em>,\u201d Mandel remembered thinking, referring to the hit Paramount+ show with Thornton playing a lead role.<\/p>\n \u201cHe said, \u2018I saw your ad. I saw the NOCD. And I haven\u2019t really talked about this with anybody personally,’\u201d Mandel recalled. They talked for an hour on the phone, and later Thornton came on Mandel\u2019s podcast, Howie Mandel Does Stuff<\/em> to compare notes on a disorder that had quietly shaped everything. \u201cBilly talked about how tiring it is,\u201d Mandel said, \u201cjust to go through your day and not be pulled into the obsessions and the compulsions that this horrible issue creates.\u201d<\/p>\n Mandel says well-known musicians, athletes, and actors have reached out privately after seeing the ads, all people who recognized it themselves and wanted to talk, without necessarily wanting to go public. \u201cI don\u2019t feel comfortable talking about everybody else,\u201d he said. \u201cCelebrities galore,\u201d he said. \u201cSaying me too. The real me too.\u201d<\/p>\n Howie Mandel<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n NOCD founder Stephen Smith started the company 11 years ago wanting to build something for people like himself\u2014one of the 8.2 million Americans with OCD. His path mirrored both Mandel\u2019s and Thornton\u2019s: misdiagnosed, without access to the right care, eventually building what he wished had existed. \u201cSteven lived a f\u2014ing nightmare,\u201d Mandel said, \u201cand he created this and got this together because of what was missing.\u201d<\/p>\n Smith knows the nightmare firsthand. A college football player at a small school in South Texas, he had a severe OCD onset the summer after his sophomore year. \u201cI went from the starting quarterback to housebound in six months,\u201d he told Fortune<\/em>. He was misdiagnosed six times before finally finding a specialist\u2014one who charged $400 an hour, cash only, with a seven-month waitlist. \u201cThat was the only chance to get better.\u201d He got through it, eventually transferred to Pomona College, finished his degree, and started building NOCD while still going to class and playing football. The problem he was solving was simple: \u201cI was misdiagnosed six different times \u2014 and unfortunately that\u2019s the standard for people with OCD.\u201d<\/p>\n General therapy isn\u2019t enough. \u201cIf you have OCD, you need to talk to somebody who doesn\u2019t just know about it, but is an expert in it,\u201d Mandel said. \u201cIt\u2019s like if you hurt your back, you don\u2019t go to your family doctor. You go to a spinal expert.\u201d NOCD has trained about 1,000 therapists specializing in exposure and response prevention therapy, the gold-standard treatment for OCD, and recently added prolonged exposure therapy for the significant subset of users dealing with both OCD and PTSD.<\/p>\n Thornton has said these conversations shifted how he sees his own struggles\u2014arguing that what the public treats as detriments are actually strengths, especially in the arts. Mandel is less romantic about it, but no less certain that talking is the point. \u201cI think when people that have a platform talk about their issues and their foibles and just their humanity,\u201d he said, \u201cit opens up a door for other people to go: okay, so I\u2019m not the only one.\u201d<\/p>\n He paused. \u201cAnd look, I\u2019m not the only one struggling.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Howie #Mandel #panic #attack #mental #health #movement #helped #build #company #worth #millions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first time Howie Mandel told the world he had OCD, he didn\u2019t mean to. He was on The Howard Stern Show, spiraling into a panic attack because he didn\u2019t… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6074,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2524,82,630,1071,1055,8529,8530,8531,2780,3355,6045,107,78],"class_list":["post-6073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-attack","tag-build","tag-company","tag-health","tag-helped","tag-howie","tag-mandel","tag-mental","tag-mental-health","tag-millions","tag-movement","tag-panic","tag-worth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Howie](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/HowieMandel.jpg?format=webp&w=1440&q=100\"\/)
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