I thought my struggle was my normal.”Mandel calls OCD “debilitating.”“What it is is these obtrusive thoughts. “Up until that time, there wasn’t the title. “I didn’t realize until really late in life how important was,” he tells Yahoo Life. Howie Mandel believes that like physical fitness, mental health is a continuous “work in progress.”The 66-year-old host of Canada’s Got Talent has been outspoken about his struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) since reaching his 40s.