Obsessive-compulsive disorder in adolescence. Differential diagnostic considerations in relation to schizophrenia and manic-depressive disorder: a comparison of phenomenology and sociodemographic characteristics.

Some borderline cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), schizophrenia, and manic-depressive disorder in whom the diagnosis had been difficult to assess in adolescence are presented. The records of 27 OCD patients with admission both in adolescence and adulthood were compared to a group of manic-depressive and schizophrenic patients with an admission in adolescence where the OCD diagnosis had been given. Some differential diagnostic considerations and difficulties in the borderline area between OCD, manic-depressive psychosis and schizophrenia at the time of the first manifestation in adolescence are described. The symptomatology in the three groups of patients as it was presented in adolescence only showed a few differences, and the patients offered differential diagnostic difficulties to the clinicians.