PERCEPTION OF DISTRESS BY OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE PATIENTS

A life event inventory has been used to compare forty obsessive compulsive neurosis patients with equal number of non-psychiatric normal controls which were matched in terms of age, sex and, economic status. Ratings by the obsessionals of the degree of happiness or distress produced by their life experiences revealed that obsessionals have significantly greater mean distress rating i.e., higher mean distress score and significantly more mean numbers of distressing events than non-psychiatric normal controls, although no such difference is observable for mean number of total events.