Letter to the Editor: COVID-19 Pandemic and the Questionable Validity of Obsessive-Compulsive Questionnaires

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted all aspects of our lives and even the scientific fields. Most of the COVID-19 preventative strategies, such as basic hygiene, are similar to concerns of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, especially those with contamination fears. The obsessive-compulsive (OC) questionnaires typically have several items about basic hygiene. The contamination/cleaning/washing subscales of all well-known OC questionnaires were inspected in terms of their similarity to the COVID-19 preventative strategies. In this paper, I discussed the way this similarity may threaten the validity of OC questionnaires along with the potential solutions.