Mataix-Cols, David;
Andersson, Philip;
Rautio, Daniel;
Flygare, Oskar;
Greenberg, Jennifer L;
Hoeppner, Susanne S;
Weingarden, Hilary;
... Cervin, Matti; + view all
(2025)
Empirically informed symptom severity cutoffs for body dysmorphic disorder.
Journal of Psychiatric Research
, 189
pp. 382-387.
10.1016/j.jpsychires.2025.06.019.
(In press).
Preview |
Text
Krebs_1-s2.0-S0022395625004170-main.pdf Download (575kB) | Preview |
Abstract
Background: Symptom severity cutoffs for body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) are lacking, hindering communication between professionals and with the patient community. / / Method: We pooled data from 11 clinical trials or high-quality cohort studies from specialist clinics, totaling 804 individuals with BDD (80% girls/women, 67% adults). All participants had baseline scores on the adult or adolescent versions of the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale Modified for BDD (BDD-YBOCS) and the Clinical Global Impressions–Severity scale (CGI-S). Receiver-operating characteristic analyses were used to identify BDD-YBOCS severity cutoffs, using the CGI-S as the benchmark measure. The classification performance of the cutoffs was evaluated in a holdout sample, consisting of 20% of randomly selected participants. / / Results: No participants had subclinical symptoms and the cutoff for clinical versus subclinical cases was not computed. A BDD-YBOCS score ≥24 distinguished moderate from mild cases (area under the curve [AUC] = 0.72 [0.64–0.81]; accuracy: 77%), a score ≥30 distinguished severe from moderate cases (AUC = 0.83 [0.90–0.87]; accuracy: 77%), and a score ≥37 distinguished extreme from severe cases (AUC = 0.82 [0.77–0.87]; accuracy: 80%). The classification performance of the cutoffs was modest in the holdout sample (62%), but consistent cutoffs were found across sexes/genders, age groups (children and adults), and participants from Europe and the United States. / / Conclusion: These BDD-YBOCS severity cutoffs can be used for clinical and research purposes across different populations but should not be used as the sole basis for important clinical decisions affecting individual patients. The boundary between subclinical and clinical BDD will require further study.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Empirically informed symptom severity cutoffs for body dysmorphic disorder |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2025.06.019 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2025.06.019 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s), 2025. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Clinical, Edu and Hlth Psychology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10210494 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
