Symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in Children

A common mental disorder is obsessive compulsive disorder. Understanding this behaviour in children is unfortunately a big mystery for people. Many people, including many psychotherapists, mistakenly think that OCD in children and adolescents is rare. As a result, children and adolescents with OCD are frequently misdiagnosed with depression, ADHD, conduct disorder, or other conditions. In actuality, childhood-onset OCD is fairly common, occurring in approximately 1% of all children. Furthermore, recent research indicates that approximately half of all adults with OCD experience clinical symptoms of the disorder during their childhood. In this article, we are going to highlight few very important symptoms of OCD in children. Understanding these symptoms, you could be able to know if your child is suffering from the same or not.

Symptoms of Childhood and Adolescent OCD

A very important point to be mentioned here is that, the symptoms of childhood-onset OCD vary widely from child to child. Some common obsessions experienced by children and adolescents with OCD include:

  • exaggerated fears of contamination from contact with certain people, or everyday items such as clothing, shoes, or schoolbooks
  • excessive doubts that he/she has not locked the door, shut the window, turned off the lights, or turned off the stove or other household appliance
  • marked over-concern with the appearance of homework assignments
  • excessive worry about symettrical arrangement of everyday objects such as shoelaces, school books, clothes, or food
  • fears of accidentally harming a parent, sibling or friend
  • superstitious fears that something bad will happen if a seemingly unconnected behavior is done (or not done)

Other than these mentioned above, there are some common compulsions experienced by children and adolescents with OCD include:

  • Compulsive washing, bathing, or showering
  • Ritualized behaviors in which the child needs to touch body parts or perform bodily movements in a specific order or symmetrical fashion
  • Specific, repeated bedtime rituals that interfere with normal sleep
  • Compulsive repeating of certain words or prayers to ensure that bad things don’t occur
  • Compulsive reassurance-seeking from parents or teachers about not having caused harm
  • Avoidance of situations in which they think “something bad” might occur

A timely consultation is something that is required for the best treatment. Don’t get confused with the symptoms with other disorders. You can contact Dr. Shashi Bhushan who is a dignified doctor for obsessive compulsive disorder treatment in Delhi.

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