Despite the potential theoretical and clinical relevance of psychopathological dimensions in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), few studies to date have investigated their possible association with obsession subtypes.

We aimed to examine whether, in OCD patients, anger and other psychopathological dimensions are associated with specific obsession subtypes.

We consecutively recruited 57 first-visit DSM-V OCD patients (females=66.7%; age range=18–63years) at the Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic of our University Hospital. These patients were affected by severe OCD, as shown by a median (1st quartile–3rd quartile) Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) score of 27.0 (23.0–32.5). We used the point-biserial coefficient (r_pbi) to measure the correlation between psychopathological dimensions, as assessed with the Scale for the Rapid Assessment of Psychopathology (SVARAD), and obsession subtypes, as evaluated with the Y-BOCS.

We found significant correlations (P-values<0.05) between: anger/aggressiveness dimension and aggressive, contamination, and sexual obsessions; apprehension/fear dimension and contamination, religious, and somatic obsessions; sadness/demoralization dimension and contamination and somatic obsessions; obsessiveness/iterativity dimension and all obsession subtypes; impulsivity dimension and aggressive and sexual obsessions; somatic concern/somatization dimension and contamination and somatic obsessions. We also found, by using the Mann-Whitney U-test, that OCD patients with comorbid Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder–but not Schizotypal or Histrionic ones–showed higher levels (P<0.05) of obsessiveness/iterativity and anger/aggressiveness than OCD patients without the personality disorder.

Anger and other psychopathological dimensions seem to be linked with specific obsession subtypes in OCD patients, suggesting an association between these dimensions and OCD.