UPmémoires

English

Introduction: Currently, forty to sixty percent of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) patients are resistant to any treatment. According to several behavioural, neuropsychological and neurofunctional research, OCD patients have impairments in a wide range of executive functions (EF; Snyder and al., 2015). This study aimed to study the potential relationships between treatment resistance and the patients' deficits in EF according to the kind of OCD symptoms and dimensions.

Methods: 66 controlled OCD patients followed since 2009 undergo five tests assessing the EF two other tests gauging their working memory and 2 questionnaires valuing neurological soft signs (NSS) and insight. The scores obtained were set to statistical analysis.

Results: 56.1% of the patients were resistant to any treatment. A t-test for paired samples analysis showed significant differences in the tests involving attentional, inhibition control and switching. Non-parametric correlation tests obtained correlations only between the Stroop test and the kinds of treatment resistance. Other links were obtained with the d2 test, the Hayling completion test and for the switching tasks but nothing for the reading span test and verbal fluency. An independent samples t-test revealed lesser NSS within the dimension contamination/washing.

Conclusion: OCD patients'resistance to treatments seems to be associated particularly with the Stroop Test. Their roles still need to be clarified further as their use as markers of neuropsychological impairment and potential predictors to treatment resistance in OCD seems obvious.

Keywords : obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), treatment-resistant OCD, insight, neurological soft signs.