Fifteen-year-old Daniel was recently diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder
(OCD). He is constantly afraid that might have lost one of his belongings—maybe the
phone, or the notebook, or that blue pen. Consequently, he needs to check every place
he is about to leave to make sure that he has not left anything behind—under the chair,
between the sofa cushions, or in the manhole in the pavement that he just walked across.
Daniel’s OCD is highly debilitating; whenever he needs to change places, he spends
ages checking and checking again that he truly has everything with him. This makes
attending school difficult, and the trip to school has become an ordeal. As a consequence,
his academic achievements have suffered, he has difficulty spending time with friends,
and his OCD has given rise to substantial tension within his family. But Daniel is
not alone. Juvenile OCD is a relatively common but neglected psychiatric disorder.
Up to 3% of the population has OCD, and the majority of patients have onset in late
childhood or early adolescence (
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: May 11, 2020
Accepted:
May 4,
2020
Received:
April 30,
2020
Identification
Copyright
© 2020 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
