When I was 10, I felt compelled to tell my parents “I love you” every time they left the house. Going to the grocery store? I love you. Going to work? I love you. Going to the mailbox? I love you. The fear that something catastrophic will happen to family members is a common manifestation of childhood and adolescent OCD. I thought that if I failed to carry out this ritual, my parents wouldn’t know that I loved them if or when something terrible occurred.

I was also preoccupied with germs; my hands were cracked and bleeding from excessive washing, and I worried constantly about contamination. I always walked a specific pattern on the rug in the hallway, and I carefully watched the family dog to be sure I’d notice when he winked at me–so that I could wink back. I couldn’t tell you why I had to wink at the dog, I just had to.

I knew that these behaviors were irrational, and yet the anxiety it caused me to resist the compulsions seemed unbearable. I was afraid to go to sleep because I worried I might sleepwalk and harm my family in the middle of the night. Nearly every evening, I would tearfully confess my intrusive thoughts to my mother, convinced that she would be afraid of me for thinking such awful things. OCD commanded almost every aspect of my life.

Did I Grow Out Of It?

My parents tried to get me into therapy, but I was shy and ashamed, and simply refused to participate. So, I started taking an SSRI, slowly titrating up to the maximum dose. And incredibly, it worked. Suddenly, I was free from the torturous anxiety and embarrassing compulsions. I could be a kid again. Two years on, I slowly came off my medication. We waited, on edge, for symptoms to return, but they never did. I’ve often wondered why I never relapsed. It seemed impossible that something that had plagued me for so long had just vanished.

Thanks, PubMed

I wanted to know if other people had experiences similar to mine, so I headed over to trusty ol’ PubMed. I found several articles that explore the topic of OCD remission. Some have woefully small sample sizes and others are barely longitudinal, but there does seem to be a higher rate of OCD remission in the pediatric population than the adult population. The factors that influence this aren’t very well understood; some studies show that an earlier onset of symptoms predicts better outcomes, while others associate earlier onset with chronic, adult OCD. Don’t you just love conflicting results? I do, however, think these results can be reconciled.

Maybe It’s About Treatment, Not Age

A study published in 2014 followed up with children and adults with OCD over a three-year period. Children achieved remission more quickly than adults who had juvenile-onset of symptoms, but the age of onset did not affect the likelihood of remission. Instead, the authors show that the less time passes between the onset of symptoms and receiving treatment, the better the outcome.

This fits with the statistics on OCD treatment. In a different study by the same authors, children went an average of 1.5 years before receiving treatment, whereas adults reported a wide range of latency periods. On average, they went 14.5 years before receiving treatment, although the standard deviation was close to 12 years. Clearly, some adults suffer in silence for decades before getting treatment.

It’s plausible, then, that children who receive treatment soon after developing symptoms see remission more often, but children who endure a longer period of uninterrupted symptoms are more likely to have chronic OCD into adulthood.

The Takeaway

Multiple studies emphasized the importance of early recognition and treatment of childhood-onset OCD. Overall, I was encouraged by what I found during my deep dive into the literature. The sources I found all seemed to agree; long-term persistence of childhood-onset OCD is less common than it is for adult-onset OCD.

After all this, I’m still not sure whether I grew out of OCD. It’s difficult to determine whether anybody grows out of it without treatment because study samples come largely from inpatient and outpatient treatment centers. I will say that I occasionally get a sticky thought that reeks of OCD, but I set it aside fairly easily.

In a completely anecdotal way, this seems to me like the pathways that I was stuck in as a child had a chance to be rewired while I was on medication. Now, my brain can cope with intrusive thoughts pretty much like anybody else’s.  If I had known that the chances were pretty good that I wouldn’t suffer from OCD forever, it might have been a little easier to cope as a child.

Treatment with ERP and medication offers adults and children relief from their OCD symptoms. So, if you have a kid with OCD, know that remission is possible. And for all the adults with OCD, know that there is hope, and you are not alone. Adults absolutely achieve remission as well. A 40-year follow-up study found that of 251 participants, improvement was observed in 83%. Those are pretty good odds!