Quality of life in patients with obsessive compulsive disorder: A longitudinal study from India

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is one of most frequently diagnosed psychiatric illness, tends to run a chronic course and severely affects the patient's quality of life (QoL). The aim of this study was to assess QoL in patients with OCD and compare it with QoL of patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and healthy controls. Forty-five patients with OCD, fifty patients with the diagnosis of MDD and one hundred and fifty healthy controls were evaluated using WHOQoL-BREF, Hindi version and their QoL scores were compared. Symptom severity of the OCD group was measured using Yale Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (YBOCS) and was charted longitudinally over a period of 6 months. The QoL of patients with OCD was found to be significantly lower in the domains of physical, psychological well-being and social domains as compared to the healthy controls. When compared with patients with MDD, the pre-treatment QoL of patients with OCD was found to be significantly higher. Six months follow up found Psychological health domains of QoL better in the MDD group than the OCD group. Between MDD and OCD groups, statistically significant differences were noted in the environment domains, though overall improvement in QoL scores was noted in both the groups in all domains. YBOCS scores significantly improved with treatment in OCD patients, as did the scores on WHOQoL-BREF. Minimal correlation was found between changes in YBOCS scores and QoL scores in OCD subjects at 6 months follow up. These findings indicate that all aspects of QoL are markedly affected in individuals with OCD, QoL scores improve with treatment and the changes in QoL scores over a period of 6 months are not necessarily correlated with corresponding changes in YBOCS scores (indicative of symptom severity in OCD subjects).