Screening Testing of Medical University Students to Detect Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Relevance. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a fairly common problem among the population. There is still no single point of view on the etiology of obsessive thoughts and actions. Consequently, people of different genders and ages, mental and physical labor, and different socio-economic status may be susceptible to this disorder. Great importance in the development of obsessions and compulsions is given to the prolonged effect of distress, traumatic situations. Hence, the issue of studying the severity of obsessive-compulsive disorder in medical students who face high mental stress, constant distress, lack of time to rest and sleep is interesting.

The aim is to determine the severity of symptoms of obsessive–compulsive disorder in medical university students through screening testing.

Methodology. An observational descriptive one-stage study was conducted with the participation of 90 5th-year students of the Perm State Medical University named after Academician E.A. Wagner, Perm. The respondents were divided into 2 groups based on gender. The first group consisted of 52 women (57.78 %), with an average age of 22.87 ± 1.16 years. The second group consisted of 38 men (42.22 %), with an average age of 23.21 ± 1.21 years. Psychodiagnostic assessment of symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder was determined using clinical questionnaires: Maudsley Scale of obsessive-compulsive symptoms, MOCI (Russian-language adaptation: D.S. Karpov, M.A. Karpova, S.P. Popova, A.B. Kholmogorova, 2022), Questionnaire of obsessive-compulsive symptoms, OCI-R (Russian-language adaptation: psytests.org, 2024. URL: https://psytests.org.ru/diag/ocir.html (date of request: 08/20/2024). The absolute values are calculated in the form of the arithmetic mean (M) and the standard deviation (SD). Statistical processing was carried out using StatSoft Statistica 12.6 software, a two-sample Student T-test was used due to the fact that the data distribution does not differ from normal. The differences were considered statistically significant at p < 0.05.

Results and Discussion. As a result of the data obtained, it was found that according to the Maudsley Scale of obsessive-compulsive symptoms, no symptoms of the above-mentioned disorder were detected in men during the psychodiagnostic study (10.79 ± 4.67 points), while in women the presence of obsessive-compulsive manifestations was confirmed by a high indicator (11.67 ± 4.41 points), however, the difference is statistically unreliable (p = 0.284). Therefore, it cannot be argued that mental disorder has a definite correlation with the gender of students. According to the data from the Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms Questionnaire, men also showed no obsessivecompulsive symptoms (9.29 ± 6.75 points), while women had the most pronounced symptoms of the disorder (13.60 ± 8.11 points), which was statistically confirmed (p = 0.009). In addition, female students with obsessive-compulsive disorder are most characterized by symptoms such as washing (3.63 ± 2.58 points) and arranging (4.13 ± 3.17 points).

Conclusion. It is impossible to say with certainty that obsessive-compulsive disorder is directly related to a person’s gender, however, the data obtained indicate that psychodiagnostic signs of mental disorder are much more common in female students and its symptoms are most pronounced in their gender group. This is probably due to the psychological and individual typological characteristics of female representatives, who are characterized by emotional lability, lower stress tolerance, current problem orientation, and an increased need for emotional stimuli. Women are characterized by symptoms of ordering and washing, while men are characterized by obsessions.