The Role of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in Predicting Skin-Picking Disorder Among Primary School Children

Background: Devoting a chapter in the DSM-5 to the obsessive-compulsive disorder and the correlation of this disorder with a wide range of related disorders, including skin picking, suggest the importance of carrying out studies to investigate this disorder among children and adolescents. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate this relationship and determine the role of obsessive-compulsive disorder in predicting the skin-picking disorder among primary school children. Methods: This descriptive study followed by a correlational-predictive design. The current study had a statistical population including all first-grade to fifth-grade primary school students aged 7 to 11 years old who were studying in both districts of Zahedan. A multistage cluster sampling method was used and 381 questionnaires were distributed to boy and girl students. The data collection tools were Foa et al. obsessive-compulsive inventory-child version (OCI-CV; 2010) and skin-picking reward scale (2015). Results: The results of a Pearson correlation coefficient indicated that the subscales of obsessive-compulsive disorder significantly and directly related to the skin-picking disorder at a99% confidencelevel. Moreover, the results obtained from a stepwise regression analysis demonstrated that obsessive thoughts predicted 0.05 of the variance of the skin-picking disorder among the children. Conclusions: The obsessive thoughts are among the main causes of the incidence of the skin-picking disorder among children and adolescents.