High Prevalence and Incidence of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Among Women Across Pregnancy and the Postpartum

Beauty and the beast: A psychoanalytically oriented qualitative study detailing mothers' experience of perinatal obsessive‐compulsive disorder

“…Research has estimated the prevalence of POCD to be 1.45 times higher in perinatal women than in the general female population (Russell et al., 2013). Recent estimates indicate that POCD impacts 3% of mothers during pregnancy (Visvasam et al., 2019), while postnatally POCD has been shown to affect as many as 9% of mothers (Fairbrother et al., 2021; Zambaldi et al., 2009).…”

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in Pregnancy and Postpartum

“…To the Editor: We welcome the opportunity to reply to the letter submitted by Dr di Giacomo and colleagues. 1 We appreciate their interesting discussion of the potential role of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) in perinatal obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) generally, and in relation to our findings in particular. They hypothesize that the very high prevalence of OCD found in our own research, 2 and (although to a lesser degree) found more generally in the perinatal literature, may be attributable to increased symptoms of OCPD perinatally.…”

“…Point prevalence gradually increased over the course of pregnancy and postpartum, with a peak of 9% about 8 weeks postpartum. 1 Previous data from the literature indicate a prevalence of around 2% during pregnancy and 2.38% in the postpartum vs 1% in the general female population. 2 Several studies provide evidence supporting more frequent OCD symptoms in the perinatal period, but a clear analysis of risk factors and reasons is still lacking.…”

High Prevalence of Perinatal-Occurring Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

“…To the We welcome the opportunity to reply to the letter submitted by Dr di Giacomo and colleagues. 1 We appreciate their interesting discussion of the potential role of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) in perinatal obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) generally, and in relation to our findings in particular. They hypothesize that the very high prevalence of OCD found in our own research, 2 and (although to a lesser degree) found more generally in the perinatal literature, may be attributable to increased symptoms of OCPD perinatally.…”

“…To the Editor: We read with interest a recent publication by Fairbrother and colleagues. 1 The authors assessed the prevalence and incidence of maternal obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) between the third trimester of pregnancy and 6 months postpartum in 763 pregnant women. Weighted prenatal and postnatal prevalence of 7.8% and 16.9% was calculated.…”