Obsessive-compulsive disorder and menopause: a scoping review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
IMPORTANCE AND OBJECTIVE: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a psychiatric condition marked by intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviors. Female-born individuals are more likely to develop OCD; reproductive events such as menarche and the peripartum are also associated with increased symptom severity. This scoping review identified existing literature on the impact of menopause on OCD onset and symptoms. METHODS: We conducted a scoping review following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for scoping reviews reporting guidelines. Four electronic databases (MEDLINE, Embase, PsycInfo, and CINAHL) were searched from inception to April 15, 2025, for original research studies examining the association between menopause and new onset or changes in preexisting obsessive-compulsive symptoms. We described study characteristics, main findings, and gaps in the existing literature. DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSION: Eight studies met criteria for inclusion in this review. All studies used quantitative methods, were cross-sectional, and relied on self-reported retrospective assessment of changes or onset of obsessive-compulsive symptoms in relation to the onset of menopause. Of 373 participants reporting on OCD onset, 17 (4.6%) reported that the initial appearance of their OCD symptoms had coincided with the onset of menopause. Of 265 participants reporting on symptom changes, 72 (27.2%) reported an exacerbation of their symptoms with the onset of menopause, while 30/265 (11.3%) reported an improvement in symptoms. Cross-sectional research suggests that OCD symptoms may change in severity or start with menopause in a subset of individuals. Longitudinal studies prospectively tracking OCD symptoms in the premenopause, perimenopause, and postmenopause phases are needed to confirm these findings. In the meantime, increased symptom monitoring of midlife female-born individuals with OCD is warranted.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".