ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders, World Health Organization, Geneva, 1992
Definition | Diagnostic Guidelines | DCR-10 Criteria
These may take the form of ideas, mental images, or impulses to act. They are very variable in content but nearly always distressing to the individual. A woman may be tormented, for example, by a fear that she might eventually be unable to resist an impulse to kill the child she loves, or by the obscene or blasphemous and ego-alien quality of a recurrent mental image. Sometimes the ideas are merely futile, involving an endless and quasi-philosophical consideration of imponderable alternatives. This indecisive consideration of alternatives is an important element in many other obsessional ruminations and is often associated with an inability to make trivial but necessary decisions in day-to-day living.
The relationship between obsessional ruminations and depression is particularly close: a diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder should be preferred only if ruminations arise or persist in the absence of a depressive disorder.
No guidelines available
ICD-10 copyright © 1992 by World Health Organization.