Obsessive compulsive disorder

1. Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
Diagnostic criteria of OCD
Obsessions Compulsions
Recurrent persistent thoughts
experienced by the patient as unwanted
and cause marked anxiety and distress.
To neutralize those thoughts, the
patient performs compulsions.
Repetitive behavior that the patient feels driven to
perform in response to obsessions and is aimed to
reduce anxiety.
Ex: obsessions about germs result in compulsions of
excessive cleaning and hand washing for hours every day.
Ex: patient may believe that the house will burn out if the
stove is not checked 30 times before leaving the kitchen.
Compulsions are performed typically in response to obsessions, but they become time consuming (take more
than 1 hour/day) and impair social and occupational functioning of the patient. This criteria may help us to
differentiate between the clinical disorder and the subclinical symptoms like occasional intrusive thoughts or
repetitive behavior that are common in general population ex: double checking that the door is locked.
DSM-5, 2013