Symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder in a sample of Iranian patients

Background: Characteristic features of the obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) occur with remarkable consistency in different cultural settings. The content of symptoms, however, seems to vary across cultures. Aims: To examine the content of symptoms in a sample of OCD patients from Iran. Methods: In a sample of 135 patients recruited from three treatment settings the prevalence of symptoms with different contents were ranked and compared across genders. Results: Doubts and indecisiveness were the most common obsessions and washing the most common compulsion for the whole sample. Fears of impurity and contamination, obsessive thoughts about self-impurity and washing compulsions were more common in women, whereas blasphemous thoughts and orderliness compulsions were more common in men. Conclusions: With minor differences, the pattern of symptoms with various contents in this sample was similar to that in Western settings.