Editorial: Outcome Measurement in Pediatric Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Current Considerations and Future Directions

Abstract

Our understanding of pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has come a long way since the important book by Paul Adams. In ;this 1973 book, Obsessive Children: A Sociopsychiatric Study, Adams described 49 youth with OCD, albeit with some blurring of OCD and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. The proposed etiology of OCD rested on psychoanalytic principles and the social psychiatric perspective. This perspective emphasized the importance of social factors in the emergence of mental illness, including OCD. A prevailing view at the time asserted that OCD was a rare, episodic condition often with childhood onset.