Background: Characteristic features of the obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) occur with remarkable consistency in different cultural settings. The content of symptoms, however, seems to vary across cultures.
Aims: To examine the content of symptoms in a sample of OCD patients from Iran.
Methods: In a sample of 135 patients recruited from three treatment settings the prevalence of symptoms with different contents were ranked and compared across genders.
Results: Doubts and indecisiveness were the most common obsessions and washing the most common compulsion for the whole sample. Fears of impurity and contamination, obsessive thoughts about self-impurity and washing compulsions were more common in women, whereas blasphemous thoughts and orderliness compulsions were more common in men.
Conclusions: With minor differences, the pattern of symptoms with various contents in this sample was similar to that in Western settings.
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