The study of the effect of moral disgust in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder / 中国神经精神疾病杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective This study aims to investigate the moral disgust cognitive processing of patients with obses?sive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and its relationship with OCD symptoms. Methods Twenty-eight OCD and 30 healthy controls matched for gender, age and education completed lexical decision task, recording reaction time and accuracy of words and assessing the degree of disgust. Yale-Brown obsessive-compulsive scale (Y-BOCS) and Padua Invento?ry-Washington State University Revision (PI-WUSR) were used to assess the symptoms. Results OCD group showed significantly longer reaction time to core disgust-related words [(762.69 ± 128.25) ms vs. (648.69 ± 162.66) ms] and moral disgust-related words [(798.73 ± 115.26) ms vs. (727.00 ± 106.06) ms] than the healthy controls (P<0.05). OCD group showed significantly higher aversion degree to core disgust-related words [(6.38 ± 1.78) vs. (5.03 ± 1.64)] and moral dis?gust-related words [(7.08 ± 1.23) vs. (5.77 ± 1.44)] than control group (P<0.05). Y-BOCS total score, Y-BOCS obsessive thoughts score, Y-BOCS compulsive behavior score, total score of PI-WUSR, cleaning/pollution force factor score, hurt?ing themselves and others force factor were positively correlated with two types of disgust-related words in patients group (P<0.05). Multiple stepwise regression analysis between disgust words and Y-BOCS/PI-WUSR scores pointed that only CWCF influenced disgust degree of core disgust-related words (β=0.61, P<0.01) and moral disgust-related words (β=0.54, P<0.01), respectively. Conclusion The core disgust and moral disgust of OCD are stronger compared to controls.