Stigma and recognition of different types of symptoms in OCD

•OCD involving responsibility for harm or taboo content is under-recognized.•Taboo content is significantly more stigmatized than other dimensions.•Recognizing OCD is associated with less stigma, regardless of symptom content.

Since stigma and poor illness recognition are two major barriers in seeking treatment for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), it is necessary to investigate the public's knowledge and perception of OCD in its many forms. The goal of the present study was to identify how stigma and recognition rates differed across four distinct symptom dimensions of OCD: contamination, symmetry, harm, and taboo content. In an online survey, 738 adults from the United States were randomly assigned to one of five vignettes describing an individual with obsessive-compulsive symptoms, followed by questionnaires assessing their reactions. The symmetry/incompleteness and contamination dimensions were significantly more likely to be labeled as OCD (84.5% and 76.1% recognition rates, respectively) than the responsibility for harm or taboo dimensions (36.9% and 30.9%, respectively). Participants in the taboo condition endorsed significantly higher levels of stigma for their character described in the vignette. Participants who labeled their vignette as OCD desired significantly less social distance and reported lower levels of fear than those who did not, regardless of condition. Our findings suggest that symptom content is a salient component of the social perception of OCD, and we discuss the relationship between mental illness recognition and stigma for this disorder.