“Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental disorder in which people have unwanted and repeated thoughts, feelings, ideas, sensations (obsessions), and behaviors that drive them to do something over and over (compulsions).
Often the person carries out the behaviors to get rid of the obsessive thoughts. But this only provides short-term relief. Not doing the obsessive rituals can cause great anxiety and distress.
Health care providers do not know the exact cause of OCD. Factors that may play a role include head injury, infections, and abnormal function in certain areas of the brain. Genes (family history) seems to play a strong role. A history of physical or sexual abuse also appears to increase the risk for OCD.
Parents and teachers often recognize OCD symptoms in children. Most people are diagnosed by age 19 or 20, but some do not show symptoms until age 30.
People with OCD have repeated thoughts, urges, or mental images that cause anxiety. These are called obsessions” (from MedlinePlus).
What are the risks?
Featured article:
*Fernández de la Cruz, Lorena, Isomura, K., Lichtenstein, P., Larsson, H., Kuja-Halkola, R., Chang, Z., D’Onofrio, B.,M., Brikell, I., Rück, C., Sidorchuk, A., & Mataix-Cols, D. (2024). All cause and cause specific mortality in obsessive-compulsive disorder: nationwide matched cohort and sibling cohort study. BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.), 384, 1. [PDF]
“Objective: To estimate the risk of all cause and cause specific mortality in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) compared with matched unaffected people from the general population and with their unaffected siblings.
Design: Population based matched cohort and sibling cohort study.
Setting: Register linkage in Sweden.
Participants: Population based cohort including 61 378 people with OCD and 613 780 unaffected people matched (1:10) on sex, birth year, and county of residence; sibling cohort consisting of 34 085 people with OCD and 47 874 unaffected full siblings. Cohorts were followed up for a median time of 8.1 years during the period from 1 January 1973 to 31 December 2020.
Main outcome measures: All cause and cause specific mortality.
Results: 4787 people with OCD and 30 619 unaffected people died during the study period (crude mortality rate 8.1 and 5.1 per 1000 person years, respectively). In stratified Cox proportional hazards models adjusted for birth year, sex, county, migrant status (born in Sweden versus abroad), and sociodemographic variables (latest recorded education, civil status, and family income), people with OCD had an increased risk of all cause mortality (hazard ratio 1.82, 95% confidence interval 1.76 to 1.89) and mortality due to natural causes (1.31, 1.27 to 1.37) and unnatural causes (3.30, 3.05 to 3.57). Among the natural causes of death, those due to endocrine, nutritional, and metabolic diseases, mental and behavioural disorders, and diseases of the nervous, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, and genitourinary systems were higher in the OCD cohort. Conversely, the risk of death due to neoplasms was lower in the OCD cohort compared with the unaffected cohort. Among the unnatural causes, suicide showed the highest hazard ratio, followed by accidents. The results were robust to adjustment for psychiatric comorbidities and familial confounding.
Conclusions: Non-communicable diseases and external causes of death, including suicides and accidents, were major contributors to the risk of mortality in people with OCD. Better surveillance, prevention, and early intervention strategies should be implemented to reduce the risk of fatal outcomes in people with OCD.”
See also —
Concentrated, intensive therapy–a new way of treating anxiety disorders
Questions? Please let me know (engelk@grinnell.edu).
