symptoms of obsessive - compulsive disorder among primary school children in zahedan, iran

Objectives: the current studyaimedat investigating the prevalence of obsessive - compulsive disorder (ocd)symptomsin zahedan, iran, and comparing it among primary school females and males aged 7 to 11 years. methods: the current descriptive study, with a causal - comparative design, was conducted on a statistical population including 61012 students (30843 males and 30169 females) studying in both districts of zahedan. a multistage cluster sampling method was applied and 381 questionnaires were distributed among the female and male students. obsessive - compulsive inventory - child version (oci - cv) developed by foa was used as a data collection tool. results: given the three cut off points considered in the oci - cv, the results demonstrated that 29.9%, 56.2%, and 13.9% of the subjects experienced mild, moderate, and severe symptoms ocd, respectively. in addition, the results of multivariate analysis of variance (manova) indicated a significant difference inocdwith regard to gender, and all symptoms of ocd(doubting/checking, obsessing, hoarding, washing, ordering, and neutralizing) were more prevalent among the females compared with males. conclusions: ocd symptoms and obsessive behaviors were more prevalent among females compared with males in zahedan primary schools.