Children and adolescents with obsessive‐compulsive disorder: the demographic and diagnostic characteristics of 61 Danish patients

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Abstract
To find children and adolescents with obsessive‐compulsive disorder (OCD), a review was made of all the charts of the 4594 nonretarded, nonpsychotic patients treated at the Children's Psychiatric Hospital in Risskov, Denmark, as in‐or outpatients from 1970 to 1986. Sixty‐one children and adolescents (37 boys and 24 girls) fulfilled the DSM‐III criteria for OCD. The frequency of OCD in a child psychiatric clientele was 1.33%, which supports earlier findings. Only 8 of the 61 children were actually discharged with a diagnosis of OCD (ICD‐8 diagnosis). Most children were diagnosed as neurosis infantilis and about one fifth received a diagnosis of maladjustment. The possible reasons for this are discussed. It is concluded that it is hardly a matter of underdiagnosing OCD, but more likely an attempt to look upon the obsessive‐compulsive symptoms as transient phenomena and perhaps an unwillingness among clinicians to use the diagnosis of OCD, which is often connected with a bad prognosis. Boys and girls with OCD did not differ significantly on important demographic items.