Prevalence of obsessive compulsive symptoms (OCS) in a sample of Egyptian adolescents

The aim of this work was to determine the prevalence of OCS among a community sample of Egyptian students. The sample was selected using a multistage stratified random sample of students from El Abasseya educational area in Cairo. The tools used in this study included the General Health Questionnaire for screening of psychiatric morbidity and the Arabic Obsessive Scale for obsessive traits. The Yale Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale was used to determine the profile of OCS and the ICD-10 research criteria for diagnosis of OCD among OCS positive subjects. The prevalence of psychiatric morbidity among the total sample was 51.7%, whilst that of obsessive traits was 26.2% and that of obsessive compulsive symptoms was 43.1%. OCS were more prevalent among the younger students, among female students and first born subjects. Aggressive, contamination and religious obsessions and cleaning compulsions were the commonest among the sample; 19.6% of subjects with OCS fulfilled ICD-10 criteria for OCD.