Harm avoidance and childhood adversities in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder and their unaffected first-degree relatives.
Katharina BeyL LennertzA RieselJ KlawohnC KaufmannS HeinzelR GrützmannN KathmannM WagnerPublished in: Acta psychiatrica Scandinavica (2017)
Our results provide further evidence for a diathesis-stress model of OCD. While patients and unaffected relatives share elevated levels of harm avoidance, supporting the role of harm avoidance as an endophenotype of OCD, a heightened severity of childhood adversity was only observed in patients. The assumed biological underpinnings of these findings are discussed.