A Study of Psychiatric Comorbidity and Fear of Corona Virus in Patients with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder during Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Background and objective: The WHO declared the Chinese outbreak of COVID-19 to be health risk of National and International Concern from 30th January 2020. This has significant implications on mental health , especially for patients of OCD in various ways. This study was aimed to study Psychiatric comorbidity and Fear of Corona virus in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) during COVID-19 pandemic and compare socio-demographic & clinical variables between patients of OCD with or without psychiatric comorbidity during COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: In person interview including 96 old and new symptomatic patients of OCD diagnosed as per ICD 10-DCR, who had onset of illness prior to COVID-19 (march 2020), between the age of 18-60 years was conducted. The disease severity was recorded on D-YBOCS, HAM-A and HAM-D. The two groups of OCD, with comorbidity and without comorbidity were compared. Fear of COVID-19 Scale was used to analyse fear of corona virus.
Results: Depression was the most common psychiatric comorbidity. The fear of coronavirus in 59.4% OCD patients was observed to be mild in severity and the mean FCV-19S score to be 14.42 ± 4.19. Positive correlation was found between FCV-19S score and the YBOCS obsession subtotal score, YBOCS compulsion subtotal score, YBOCS total score, HAM-D score and HAM-A score. FCV-19S score also had a statistically significant positive correlation with D-YBOCS severity score for contamination and cleaning, severity score for hoarding and collecting, severity score for symmetry and severity score for aggression. Among the OCD patients with comorbidity, a statistically significant higher YBOCS score, D-YBOCS severity score for Contamination and Cleaning and FCV-19S score were observed when compared to OCD patients without comorbidity.
Conclusions: Fear of corona virus was seen in majority of the OCD patients and was associated with increased severity of disease. The OCD patients with comorbidity had significantly higher Y-BOCS score mainly for Contamination and Cleaning.