Through an ethnographic story and two biographical narratives, in this article the author proposes to illustrate the way in which a psychiatric diagnostic entity is privileged place for the analysis of certain sociocultural aspects involved in the experience of mental illness. The stories of Angel (15 years old) and Rosario (75 years old) (fictitious names), patients diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and hospitalized in two private psychiatric clinics in the city of Bogotá will serve for this purpose. In both cases, the magic-religious substratum shines as a structurant of his experience of suffering, which sustains the ritualistic characteristic of this particular disorder. As a result, it is shown that suffering as an analytical node favours the understanding of domains that intersect personal and collective life.