Prevalence and severity of obsessive-compulsive disorder and their relationships with dermatological diseases

Most obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients meet psychiatrists 5 to 10 years after onset of OCD .Its relatively high prevalence ratio and the delay in seeking help suggest that patients with OCD may seek help at non-psychiatric clinics. The present study was undertaken to provide some epidemiological data on the prevalence and severity of OCD in dermatological patients. The participants included 265 consecutive patients with primary dermatologic chief complaint. They were visited by a dermatologist and diagnosis of dermatological lesion was done according to ICD-10. All patients were visited by a psychiatry resident and were screened for OCD using the structured clinical interview for DSM-IV-TR (SCID-I). If the diagnosis of OCD has been made, the Yale-Brown obsessive compulsive scale(Y-BOCS) was used to evaluate the severity of OCD. To analyze the data student t-test for quantitative variables and X2 tests for categorical variables. From the total of 265 patients, 24 (9.1%) met the DSM-IV-TR criteria for OCD and 9 (37.5%) with OCD had previously been diagnosed with OCD, however, only three were treated pharmacologically. The most symptoms were pathological doubt (29.1%), fear of contamination (29.1%) and washing (54.16%).  Severity of OCD according to Y-BOCS was evaluated among patients with OCD. Six (25%) were found with subclinical OCD, 11(45.8%) had mild OCD, six (25%) had moderate OCD, and one (4.2%) was detected with severe OCD. prevalence of OCD in dermatology clinic was higher compared with general population.