ABSTRACT
Many people will experience traumatic life events without developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and the same is true for obsessivecompulsive disorder (OCD). However, clinicians and researchers have noted an association between trauma and the onset and maintenance of OCD. Trauma may contribute to the development of OCD, or comorbid OCD and PTSD (Gershuny et al., 2002), and the presence of traumatic life events is often associated with increased OCD symptom severity (Cromer, Schmidt, & Murphy, 2007). Stress can increase both the occurrence of triggering intrusive thoughts and relapse rates in OCD (de Silva & Marks, 1999), and whilst the content of obsessions and compulsions may be linked in an obvious way to the nature of the trauma (for example, people who check doors following an assault), this will not necessarily be the case. Similarly, the development of compulsions following a trauma can not necessarily be predicted by premorbid tendencies (de Silva & Marks, 1999).
