Quality of life and symptom dimensions of patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder

The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of different dimensions of obsessive–compulsive symptoms, of co-morbid anxious depressive symptoms, and of sociodemographic characteristics on the quality of life of patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). We evaluated 53 patients with OCD and 53 age- and gender-matched individuals from the community with a sociodemographic questionnaire, the Structured Clinical Interview for the Diagnosis of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth Edition, (DSM-IV), the Short-Form Health Survey-36 (SF-36), the Saving Inventory–Revised, the Obsessive–Compulsive Inventory–Revised, the Beck Depression Inventory and the Beck Anxiety Inventory. A series of stepwise linear regression analyses were performed, having the SF-36 dimensions as the dependent variables and the sociodemographic and clinical features as the independent ones. Patients with OCD displayed significantly lower levels of quality of life in all dimensions measured by the SF-36, except bodily pain. A model that included depressive symptoms, hoarding and employment status predicted 62% of the variance of the social functioning dimension of the quality of life of patients with OCD. Washing symptoms explained 31% of the variance of limitation due to physical health problems. Further, a series of models that included depressive, but not obsessive–compulsive symptoms, explained the remaining SF-36 dimensions. The severity of depressive and anxiety symptoms seems, therefore, to be powerful determinants of the level of quality of life in patients with OCD.