Traumatic and stressful life events as precipitants of obsessive compulsive disorder and social anxiety disorder

Potentially traumatic events (PTEs) and stressful life events (SLEs) are recognized as environmental risk factors for diverse psychiatric disorders, including obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD). However, research has predominantly focused on the presence and quantity of PTE/SLE exposure rather than specific event types or associated emotions. This study aimed to investigate the role of PTEs/SLEs in the onset of OCD and SAD. We recruited patients diagnosed with OCD (n = 38) or SAD (n = 25) and contrasted their responses to the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF) and the newly developed Obsessive-Compulsive Related Disorders Stressful and Traumatic Events Scale (OTraS), which was built to measure events related to OCD and related disorders. Data analysis was performed using Mann-Whitney tests. Childhood trauma severity did not differ between groups; however, OTraS responses demonstrated that participants with OCD reported exposure to a significantly higher number of PTEs/SLEs, r = .25, p = .044, especially those related to loss and deprivation, than those with SAD, r = .36; p = .004. Importantly, this difference remained significant after controlling for the presence of hoarding disorder, p = .012. Our findings indicate that PTEs/SLEs, particularly those that were loss- and deprivation-related, are more common before OCD onset than SAD onset. Further research is needed to explore whether different PTE/SLE types are transdiagnostically relevant for the whole spectrum of OCD- and anxiety-related disorders or may shape specific disorder development in at-risk individuals.