Quality of Life of Adolescents with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Attending in a Tertiary Care Hospital

Abstract

Background: Quality of life is defined as “an individual’s perceptions of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns.” Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is associated with poor quality in various domains of life. But it is relatively unexplored in adolescent population.

Objectives: To determine quality of life of adolescents with OCD attending in a tertiary care hospital in Dhaka City of Bangladesh.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional descriptive study conducted in Bangladesh Medical University (BMU) during the period of October 2021 to September 2023. In total, 35 adolescents with OCD were purposively enrolled for the study. After taking their informed assent and consent they were interviewed using a semi-structured sociodemographic and relevant information questionnaire along with Bangla versions of the Children's Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (CY-BOCS) and the World Health Organization Quality of life Scale, brief version (WHOQOL-BREF). Interview was carried out in face-to-face self-report format using paper and pencil method. Ethical clearance was taken from Institutional Review Board and ethical issues were addressed throughout the study. Data were collected by the researcher and analyzed using SPSS 28.0 software. All comparisons were considered significant if p< 0.05.

Results: Mean age of the participants was 15.3 with 71.4% of them being in late adolescence. On CY-BOCS, mean score on obsession domain found was 10.3 and compulsion domain 9.7 with a total mean score of 20. 8.6% adolescents subjectively reported their QoL as poor and 8.6% reported their QOL as very poor. 40% participants reported being fairly dissatisfied and 11.4% reported being very dissatisfied with their health. The mean score in psychological domain of QoL was the lowest of four domains. Percentwise, 65.7% found to have poor psychological QoL, 65.7% poor social, 62.9% poor physical and 51.4% have poor environmental QoL. Age, gender and education level had varying impacts on different domains of QoL in individuals with OCD. Lastly, higher obsession, compulsion and total score in CY-BOCS negatively correlated with QoL.

Conclusions: Adolescents with OCD experience significant impairment in their quality of life. A number of factors particularly higher symptom severity is associated with poorer overall quality of life.......