Obsessive-compulsive disorder and quality of life outcomes: Protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis of cross-sectional case-control studies

Background: obsessive-compulsive disorder (ocd) is a chronic disabling psychological condition, which can severely affect quality of life (QoL). growing interest has been dedicated to assessing which domains of QoL are more severely affected in patients with ocd but the findings have not been unanimous. research on QoL in ocd could suggest the domains in which intervention could be improved. Methods: here we propose a systematic review of cross-sectional case-control studies according to PrIsMa guidelines, comparing QoL outcomes of patients with a primary ocd diagnosis with healthy controls. Primary objectives will be to examine differences in QoL outcomes between patients with ocd and healthy controls, and to assess which QoL domains are more severely impaired in patients than controls, particularly subjective well-being, social and interpersonal functioning, work functioning and family functioning. the study will then investigate potential moderators of QoL in ocd, including participant characteristics (age, gender, presence of comorbid personality disorders, ocd symptom severity, severity of concurrent depressive symptoms, duration of ocd symptoms and generational cohort) and study characteristics (date of publication and methodological quality of studies). online databases will be searched (PsycInFo, PubMed, science direct, cinahl, Biological abstracts, Psyclit, embase, the cochrane central register of controlled trials, and google scholar). to locate unpublished records, conference abstracts, doctoral dissertations and theses will be handsearched, and experts will be contacted. statistical analysis will be performed by random effect model meta-analysis. risk of bias assessments will be conducted using the instrument Methodological Index for non-randomized studies.