title: Psychopharmacologic treatment of child and adolescent obsessive compulsive disorder.
abstract: Recent evidence now suggests that OCD is much more common in young people than previously thought, affecting up to 200,000 children and adolescents in the United States alone. Unlike many childhood disorders, OCD appears remarkably similar for children and adults in terms of both clinical presentations and treatment response. The treatments of choice for OCD are antidepressants with potent serotonergic reuptake blocking effects such as fluoxetine and clomipramine. Both medications appear to be equally effective in terms of symptom remission, with different investigators reporting response rates in the range of 50% to 75%. Recent evidence suggests, however, that fluoxetine may be tolerated more easily than clomipramine and may be associated with less relapse upon discontinuation. Behavior therapy, either alone or in combination with medication, has been shown to be an effective alternative treatment. In spite of the increasing recognition of the disorder in both adults and children, only a handful of treatment outcome studies of child and adolescent OCD have been conducted and much work remains to be done in this area.
authors.affiliation: College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, New York, New York.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Piacentini
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Jaffer
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gitow
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Graae
authors.forename: S O
authors.initials: SO
authors.lastname: Davies
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Del Bene
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Liebowitz
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009771:Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder / Q000188:drug therapy*; D011619:Psychotropic Drugs / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D012702:Serotonin Antagonists / Q000627:therapeutic use
chemical_list: D011619:Psychotropic Drugs; D012702:Serotonin Antagonists