*Introduction*
This project explores how individuals who deal with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) respond to a pandemic. Research on the psychological impacts of quarantine (reviewed in Brooks et al., 2020) has generally found that people in quarantine experience poorer psychological outcomes than those not in quarantine. However, while researchers have speculated as to how individuals with OCD may be struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic, empirical evidence on this subject is lacking. Evidence from this project may help healthcare providers to understand how individuals with OCD feel their symptoms relate to an ongoing pandemic.
*Hypotheses*
We hypothesize that for individuals who have (or suspect they have) OCD,
1) Their self-rated OCD symptoms, in general, worsened since COVID began;
2) Their thoughts and compulsions about contamination worsened since the beginning of COVID-19 to a greater extent than did their concerns about responsibility, their unacceptable thoughts, and their concerns about symmetry;
3) Individuals who experience contamination OCD felt their general mental health got poorer and felt their control over their OCD symptoms decreased as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic to a greater extent than individuals who experience any other category of OCD did.
4) Higher disease-related contamination concerns about oneself are positively associated with the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on one’s general mental health to a greater extent than do higher non-disease-related concerns and higher disease-related concerns about others;
5) The more adaptive thoughts and behaviors one has during the COVID-19 pandemic, the better their general mental health is, the less they feel their overall OCD symptoms are making life difficult (DV: ocdmoredifficult-ocdeasier), the less their distress/anxiety about a close friend contracting COVID-19 is, the less their sense of disruption to their life resulting from COVID-19 is, and the greater their feeling of control over their OCD symptoms was/is both before and after the COVID-19 pandemic began.
*Analysis plan*
1) We will conduct a one-sample t-test comparing the self-rated change between before and after the COVID-19 pandemic began, averaged across all four domains of the DOCS, to no change.
2) We will conduct a t-test to compare the self-rated change as a result of the pandemic in the extents to which individuals’ “thoughts and compulsions about contamination”, versus the average of their “concerns about responsibility”, “unacceptable thoughts”, and “concerns about symmetry” (all evaluated by the DOCS).
3) We will label individuals with an average score of 2 (out of 4) across the questions in a given category of OCD symptoms on the DOCS as experiencing that category of OCD symptoms. Then, we will conduct a t-test comparing the self-rated change in general mental health of individuals who experience contamination OCD to that of individuals who experience any other category of OCD. Lastly, we will conduct a t-test comparing the change in control over their OCD symptoms of individuals who experience contamination OCD to that of individuals who experience any other category of OCD. Those who do not experience any category of OCD will be excluded from these analyses.
**3a)** It may be that using a mean of 2 in a given category as a cutoff for labeling an individual as "experiencing" that category of OCD symptoms is not appropriate. Thus, we will conduct the same analysis as described in analysis 3 with a different cutoff, labeling individuals as "experiencing" a category of symptoms if they indicate at least a 3 on any symptom in a given category.
4) We will conduct a multiple regression with each of 6 kinds of concern as predictor variables (1. Contamination fears about you contracting a disease 2. Contamination fears about being responsible for others contracting a disease 3. Other disease-related contamination fears 4. Contamination fears that are not related to a disease 5. Fears about being responsible for others getting contaminated that are not related to a disease 6. Other non-disease-related contamination fears as predictors) and the change in individuals' mental health (measured by the mean of 6 questions about the change in their emotions since the COVID-19 pandemic began) as the outcome variable.
5) We will conduct a separate multiple regression for each of the outcomes listed. Adaptive thoughts evaluated by the FATS scale will be the focal predictor in each regression. The following covariates will also be included in each regression: age, gender, ethnicity, and country.
