Clinical Features of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

The Brazilian Research Consortium on Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorders: recruitment, assessment instruments, methods for the development of multicenter collaborative studies and preliminary results

“…In the literature, the rates for depressive episodes vary from 20-67%, for specific phobias from 7%-22%, for social anxiety disorder from 8-42% and generalized anxiety disorder from 8-32%. [32][33][34][35][36][37][38] The slightly higher figures for some disorders in our sample may be due to the fact that these patients are from specialized or tertiary services, which usually assist more severe cases. The 7.5% prevalence of alcohol dependence is similar to that of other clinical studies 34,39 and much lower than that of community studies, 40,41 as expected.…”

Lack of Association of catechol-O-Methyltransferase Gene Polymorphism in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

“…Increasing evidence shows that a range of insight exists in patients with OCD [Foa et al, 1995]. It is still a matter of debate whether patients with poor insight have a dif ferent treatment response or illness course than patients with better insight [Attiullah et al, 2000], and there exist controversial results about this issue [Eisen et al, 2001;Erzegovesi et al, 2001]. DSM-IV recognizes a poor insight subtype of OCD when an individual fails to recognize the irrational or unreasonable nature of the obsessions.…”

Diagnostic interview assessed neuropsychiatric disorder comorbidity in 334 individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder

“…Many authors have proposed reasons for this relationship. One hypothesis is that a continuing struggle with OCD symptoms results in demoralization and a late onset of depression, although this notion as a global conclusion has been challenged [Attiullah et al, 2000;Welner et al, 1976]. Another possibility is that there is a psychobiological link between OCD and affective disorders, particularly in serotonin system dysregulation [Insel et al, 1985].…”