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Clinicians have long thought that features of obsessive-compulsive disorder in childhood and adolescence evolve into more-complicated conditions as patients reach adulthood. However, previous studies have not fully characterized such changes. These researchers conducted a first-of-its-kind naturalistic, cross-sectional study to compare current and lifetime correlates of juvenile-onset OCD (age at onset, <18 years) in 64 current juveniles with OCD (including 44 adolescents) and 193 adults with juvenile-onset OCD (mean age, 38). Participants were drawn from a large longitudinal study of OCD.
OCD symptoms were moderate, and overall psychopathology was moderate to severe. Only 20.3% of the juveniles and 10.4% of the adults reported “pure” OCD, u…