Show me someone who is sane. I don’t think I know anyone who doesn’t have some mental tick, phobia, neurosis or coping mechanism which is a little, well, mad.

And isn’t that what makes people interesting?

On-telly medical mishaps and dramas are everywhere – from the guess-the-ailment fun of daytime bilge such as Doctors or glorious blubfest One Born Every Minute. But disorders of the mind? That’s seldom telly fodder – unless you count the early rounds of X Factor.

Until this week. Yes, the crazy serendipity of television schedules has given us Bedlam (C4), OCD Ward (ITV) and OCD Cleaners (C4). You wait years for a show documenting obsessive compulsive disorder, then three come along at once.

This is good news. Rather than putting people in the ‘nutjob’ box or typecasting them as ludicrous Rainman caricatures, here are people just like you, battling their demons.

Take Simon Darnley, anxiety specialist at Bethlem Royal Hospital in south London, formerly an asylum called Bedlam which allowed 17th century visitors in to gawp at the inmates. Simon is the don of mental illness and mood disorders: treating them, that is. “Sometimes, waiting for children at a zebra crossing in the morning, I’m tempted to put my foot down and mow them down,” he admits.

Remember: he’s one of the ‘sane’ ones. He doesn’t mow children down, by the way; he’s trying to dispel the stigma of irrational thought.

Bedlam allows us into the world of those whose mania has taken them hostage. We see Helen, a librarian plagued by thoughts of harming strangers, specifically putting them into bins, fragile student James who has been forced to spend the best chunk of his youth not bumming around in pubs but obsessed with crapping himself to the extent that he is housebound. Every person who took part in Bedlam accepted the camera crew into their terrible world of traps and triggers with a welcoming, open attitude that is humbling.

ITV’s OCD Ward was illuminating, too, although difficult viewing. While OCD afflicts a million people in the UK, only the severest cases end up at London’s Springfield University Hospital. And us, now, too. As ever, it’s Joe Public who turns this programme from awful montage of misery into something a bit more noble – and funny. For example Enis is the kind of bloke you’d happily have a pint with, but is convinced he is contaminated by germs and forced to scrub himself until he bleeds. Peering into a bag stuffed with scouring sponges, he says “I used to use, y’know, those sea sponges, very soft, to get clean. Then, one day they weren’t enough. I needed more, and moved on to these. It’s a bit like drugs – this is pills. I suppose the heroin stage is bleach and that.” He looks off, intensely into the middle distance, willing himself to find a route out of this torture and get on with his life.

You wish him all the best, but you’re also mystified by the treatment prescribed by the docs – namely rubbing public toilet seats and flush handles on to his forehead and mouth. A disgusting aversion therapy, but no quick fix, of course, because life just ain’t that kind.

While both these programmes about madness were laudable, the bargain bucket OCD Cleaners was not. No doctors or sensitive treatment here: instead, those tormented by fears of dirt and mess were paired up with the clinically depressed who had been unable to tackle the housework for years. Unsurprisingly, both have meltdowns and sobbing fits. Channel 4 doesn’t have the courtesy to supply doctors and cognitive behavioural therapy to its patients on show. And for that, television producers need their heads examined.