Cognitions in young people with OCD

There is evidence to suggest that young people in general also experience intrusive thoughts that are no different to those experienced in OCD and that if the thoughts cause distress and/or are more actively managed, they tend to persist for longer (Allsopp and Williams, 1996). Studies comparing young people with OCD to non-anxious controls or young people with other anxiety disorders have sought to investigate whether the same belief domains shown in adults with OCD are present in younger populations. Libby et al. (2004) found that young people with OCD had significantly more responsibility appraisals and beliefs around thought–action fusion than anxious controls. Barrett and Healy (2003) also found inflated responsibility and increased thought–action fusion and higher ratings of harm severity in young people with OCD but that the differences were not significant. This may reflect differences in measures used, or it may be that as this was with a younger sample cognitions may not be fully developed. Nevertheless, they did find the group of young people with OCD were significantly different when it came to cognitive control. This provides some preliminary evidence that young people with OCD demonstrate similar cognitions identified in adults with OCD.