The prevalence of obsessive compulsive symptoms in a sample of Egyptian psychiatric patients

Obsessions can occur in many psychiatric disorders or they may constitute the entire illness, which is then referred to as an obsessional state (Rees, 1993). The relationship of obsessive compulsive symptoms (OCS) to different psychiatric disorders is still controversial. This work was undertaken to study the co-occurrence and phenomenology of OCS with other psychiatric disorders. We examined a sample of 372 psychiatric outpatients using the arabic version of Yale Brown obsessive-compulsive symptom (Y-BOCS) checklist and compared them with a control group composed of 308 non-psychiatric subjects. Subjects were additionally assessed by means of the obsession symptom section of the PSE (10th) edition for trait rating, the arabic version of the Eysenck rigidity scale and the arabic version of the religious orientation scale. OCS were found to be significantly higher in the different psychiatric categories than in the non-psychiatric categories; 83% of patients with neurotic, stress related and somatoform disorders, 51% of patients with mood disorders and 47% of patients with schizophrenia, schizotypal and delusional disorders were found to have OCS in their symptomatology. Furthermore, the data suggest that OCS in psychiatric patients have a distinct phenomenology from that in non-psychiatric subjects. The results did not however reveal a relationship between OCS and either rigidity or religious orientation.