People who suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder are more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia, according to new research published in JAMA Psychiatry.
Children of parents with OCD are also more prone to the mental health illness, the Danish study found. In order to explore the links between the two conditions, Aarhus University analyzed Danish databases including three million people born between the years of 1955 and 2006. Those who were born between 1995 and 2012 were also considered.
The study found that some 16,000 people developed schizophrenia and 447 of them had a prior diagnosis of OCD. It also found that a total of 30,000 people developed a schizophrenia spectrum disorder and 700 of them a prior OCD diagnosis.
'We observed a specific association with OCD,” Dr. Sandra Meier said. “'In addition we observed an effect of parental OCD on the risk of developing schizophrenia and schizophrenia spectrum disorders.”
Despite the correlation, Meier said that the two disorders shouldn’t be aggregated into one diagnosis. She added that the dual diagnosis, however, could be higher than doctors imagine because the correlation has never previously be documented.
“Although a psychiatric hospital contact per se increased the risk of developing schizophrenia and schizophrenia spectrum disorders,” Meier said, “a prior diagnosis of OCD explained some additional variation in the disease's susceptibility.”
Meier noted that further research is needed in order to figure out which genetic and environmental risk factors are truly common to both OCD and chizophrenia.
Other disorders onset at childhood like autism, bulimia nervosa and ADHD were not shown to increase the risk of developing schizophrenia or schizophrenia spectrum disorders like OCD.
Source: Psych Central