Published by JAMA Psychiatry, a recent study shows that people diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder or OCD or even the children of adults with OCD have higher possibilities of developing schizophrenia and schizophrenia spectrum disorders in the latter years.
Over 15,200 people out of 3 million have schizophrenia and a whooping 3 percent of that population had a preceding diagnosis of OCD according to Sandra M. Meier, Ph.D., lead researcher of Aarhus University, Denmark, and colleagues, on the data they have analyzed on people born from 1955 to 2006.
The results of the new study, however, show an overlaying of the two disorders doesn't propose that the two disorders should be in one diagnosis.
OCD patients have 5.8 times greater risks of having schizophrenia spectrum and 6.9 times greater risks of schizophrenia. While the children whose parents were diagnosed with OCD have 3.1 times greater risk of having schizophrenia spectrum and 4.3 greater risk of schizophrenia.
According to the researchers, the results of their study indicate a distinct necessity for prevention in OCD patients, particularly those that show OCD symptoms as these two disorders, when present in any individual can lead to the most unfavorable results of schizophrenia.
Symptoms of suicide attempts, severe depression, greater psychological disabilities which result to higher unemployment tendencies, higher hospitalization risks and earlier age of onset are reported to be most present among individuals who show schizophrenic and OCD symptoms.
The two disorders, possibly lie on the same passageway, according to the researchers. However, the study needs more research to unveil which environmental and hereditary factors of risk are surely common to the two disorders.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a disorder of the brain and behavior. Obsessive-compulsive disorder causes severe anxiety in those affected; they show either mentally or physically repetitive behaviors to reduce the anxiety.
Happening in 1 out of 100 people, the most uncommon and most serious mental illness disorder is schizophrenia. The disorder commonly begins in late adolescence and shows symptoms like paranoia, delusions, cognitive impairment, hallucinations, self-neglect, loss of motivation and initiative and social withdrawal.
