Does the severity of obsessive-compulsive symptoms reduce with age?

In response to frequent enquires by clinicians and patients concerning whether symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) become less severe with age, we performed an analysis of our data from the 228 adult participants of the Nepean OCD Study and found that older OCD sufferers had less severe OCD (see Fig. 1). There are few longitudinal studies that have attempted to answer this question. Skoog and Skoog (1999)'s 40-year longitudinal study reported that most OCD sufferers improve, but continue to have clinical or subclinical symptoms, however this study did not assess OCD severity using standardized rating scales.