Obsessive symptoms among children and adolescent age groups are increasing, an observation made by mental health professions working with this age group. Our epidemiological study is targeting secondary school students to estimate the prevalence of obsessive symptoms, obsessive compulsive disorder and to evaluate psychiatric comorbidities among students with obsessive compulsive symptoms.

The study is a cross sectional carried on 1299 secondary school students, the sample size was chosen based on an estimated OCD prevalence of 2% in literature. Equal samples were recruited from the 3 educative zones in Alexandria Governorate. Obsessive compulsive symptoms were assessed by the Arabic version of Lyeton obsessive inventory child version LOI-CV. Students scoring above 35 were subjected to the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview for children MINI-KID Arabic version to assess psychiatric comorbidities. OCD patient students detected by MINI-KID were assessed by psychiatric interview to confirm fulfilling criteria of OCD according to DSM IV - TR criteria.

The sample was equally distributed according to gender with 51.7% and 48.3% of males and females respectively. The prevalence of obsessive compulsive symptoms was 15.5%, while that of obsessive compulsive disorder was 2.2%. Comorbidity with other psychiatric disorders was high for substance abuse 18.9%, Dysthymia 16.4%, social phobia 15.9%, Major depression 13.9%, Generalized anxiety disorder 12.9%.

The prevalence of obsessive compulsive symptoms is high among adolescent age group, there is high Comorbidity between obsessive symptoms and psychiatric disorders particularly substance abuse, mood disorders and non OCD Anxiety spectrum disorders.