Assessing psychophysiologic parameters in patients with obsessive compulsive disorder

Abstract

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) imposes a significant social, personal, and medical burden, and also has distinct anxiety-related aspects associated with altered autonomic nervous system function. The current technology has made it possible to evaluate many parameters related to autonomous functions, and the information related to these parameters in scientific texts shows a significant gap. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a mental disorder that is characterized by unwanted, frequent and annoying thoughts, in response to these thoughts, mental actions or specific behaviors are performed by the affected person. The present study measures and describes several parameters related to autonomic functions in OCD sufferers. Materials and methods: Sixty-eight patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder with an average age of 30.29±9.41 years have been studied, all participants filled the Yale Brown Obsessive Compulsive Questionnaire and recorded psychophysiological parameters including skin conductance, temperature of the extremities, breathing pattern, and Heart rate variability (HRV) was measured with ECG by Procom 2 device of Thought Technology (Montreal, Canada). Findings: The autonomic parameters obtained from patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder showed autonomic tension in all patients, although the way it was varied, contrary to expectations, significant patients had low and very low sympathetic activity (51.46%) and HRV levels were in various ranges. (4.41% high vs. 66.17% low or very low). The findings show that there is a lack of parasympathetic activity in OCD patients, and it has been mentioned in clinical neuroscience that strengthening the physiological systems that increase parasympathetic activity can correct many mental issues. baseline assessment showed that the compliance rate in criteria 4 and 5 was below 50%, which indicates poor compliance with existing evidence, after the implementation of plans to remove obstacles and the use of strategies and training programs, there was an increase in compliance in In all 5 criteria, we saw an increase in compliance in the first criterion from an acceptable average level (32.19 and 15.9 to 75.9%).