Reports of OCD among under 25’s triple in 10 years

BBC analysis of NHS data has found that the number of young people aged 16-24 in England reporting symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD, has more than tripled in a decade.

The condition is now the second most common mental health disorder among young adults, according to statistics from a major NHS England survey.

“OCD, I like to think of it as a bully; it attacks everything, everything you care about, everything you love,” says Sophie Ashcroft.

“A lot of people associate OCD with cleanliness and being clean and putting all your socks in a certain order. It’s so much more than that.”

The 22-year-old is one of many young people and their families who contacted us via Your Voice, Your BBC News, explaining how they were unable to access NHS treatment for their symptoms.

Those who could see spoke about the lack of specialized personnel and effective treatments.

The average referral time for young people to a national OCD center in London was 41 weeks last year; this was almost three times longer than five years ago.

The government has told us it will “turn services around”, hiring an extra 8,500 mental health workers, offering more talking therapy and providing better access to help via the NHS App. He also noted the expansion of mental health support teams in schools.

Sophie sometimes finds it difficult to leave the house because she feels compelled to repeat menial tasks, such as taking a shower or cleaning her teeth, to distract disturbing or distressing thoughts.

“If I had a bad thought during the day, the rest of my day would be ruined. I would think something bad was going to happen,” he tells us.

People contacted by BBC News said lives were being devastated, with some families unable to receive NHS help spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on private care.

Charities insist there is an OCD crisis and say the figures should be a wake-up call for the government.

OCD symptoms can affect adults and children and can begin as early as age six, but they are often triggered during adolescence and early adulthood.

He says Sophie’s symptoms first appeared when she was nine, but things became much worse ten years later, when a close friend died.

He says this leads him to repeat it over and over to distract disturbing thoughts; Things that most people consider ordinary and would do without a second thought.

“Something tells me you have to do it again, you have to hug that person again, and that takes control,” says Sophie. “This is such a terrible, terrible feeling.”

Despite all this, Sophie has just finished drama school. “I’m really good at hiding it, but behind closed doors there’s complete panic,” he explains.

Our latest NHS Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (June 2025) analysis found that around 370,000 young people in England reported OCD symptoms in the 2023/24 financial year.

This is more than three times the figure in 2014, when the figure was around 113,000.

This means OCD is now second on the list of mental health disorders; places it and other anxiety disorders well ahead of depression:

• Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) 7.6%

• Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) 5.7%

• Depressive episodes 3.8%

Experts say increased awareness of the condition is likely contributing to people seeking help; but according to charities and most OCD sufferers, social issues combined with the pressure of social media are the main reason for the reported increase.

Leigh Wallbank, chief executive of the charity OCD Action, describes the lives of many young people as a “crucible of pressure”.

“They face financial problems, education problems, global problems; the environment is a huge problem,” he tells us. “I think they’re living in this pressure cooker, and underneath that is social media heating up this pressure cooker.”

Minesh Patel, deputy director of policy and influence at mental health charity Mind, says the Covid-19 pandemic is also playing a part.

The pandemic has placed a “particular and unique burden” on people with OCD, he says, due to the disruption of routine, reversal of social norms and excessive focus on hygiene.

“Barriers to social interaction, including treatment and support services, meant that many coping mechanisms were impaired or unavailable for long periods of time,” he adds.

NHS help for OCD patients includes specialist talk therapy called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and may include Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP).

Thanks to ERP, patients are gradually exposed to their fears, helping them manage their anxiety, while also preventing them from engaging in their habitual compulsive behaviors.

Medication, usually some type of antidepressant, is also offered.

However, not everyone has access to these treatments.

Sophie was told by her GP that she probably had OCD, but two years later she still hasn’t been able to get an appointment with a specialist for a formal diagnosis.

Meanwhile, her doctor has referred her for a limited course of CBT, which will end soon. Sophie says she is “absolutely petrified” about what the future holds.

OCD Action’s Leigh Wallbank criticizes the government for failing to collect regular quarterly data on obsessive-compulsive disorder and the outcomes of patients with the disorder, as it does on many other disorders.

The charity says that without data the NHS is blind to the true extent of OCD, the success of treatments and who is left behind.

We asked health authorities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland if they knew the number of young people showing symptoms of OCD, but all said they did not collect this information.

A mother from the south of England, who wished to remain anonymous, said her autistic daughter first showed signs of OCD when she was 10 years old. She says her daughter is now 17 and has severe OCD.

“My daughter was cut multiple times while she was a scholarship student.”

The teen was recommended some specialized treatments, but her mother told us that her daughter was often too unwell to leave the house for appointments or even take her medication.

“Effect [all] Our children and we are destructive. “Our lives have been destroyed not just by disease, but by a system that cannot or will not provide the help he needs when he needs it.”

Britain is failing in its treatment of teenagers with severe OCD, mother says. He believes there are not enough specialists, beds or treatment options.

Children and adolescents with OCD across England can receive treatment at a national center at the Maudsley Hospital in London.

But the average wait time for a referral to the service has risen from 15 weeks in 2020 to 41 weeks in 2024, according to a response to the BBC’s Freedom of Information Act request.

But the hospital trust says the waiting time has been shortened.

Ade Odunlade, chief operating officer at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We have worked incredibly hard to reduce delays, reducing the average waiting time for assessments to around 20 weeks.

“We empathize with everyone who has to wait for their evaluations as we know how difficult this is.”

The trust says it has now managed to secure additional funding which will allow them to employ more staff and reduce the waiting list even further.

He tells us a wait of approximately 12-16 weeks is expected for evaluation in early Spring 2026.

But even if people can access all the help available, sometimes that’s not enough.

Graham and Marie Fuller, from Norwich, contacted the BBC to say their daughter had been hospitalized with OCD at the age of 12.

They described a revolving door pattern of going back and forth between NHS services for different treatments, with their daughter getting better and then getting worse again and again.

After their daughter struggled with the condition for years, the family decided to travel to Texas to try a rare and radical procedure.

Their daughter, now 20, underwent deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery; In this surgery, electrodes are implanted in the brain to deliver electrical impulses to help manage OCD symptoms.

The treatment has been approved by US regulators, but in the UK the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) says DBS can only be used for research studies because there is not enough evidence of how safe or effective the practice is for OCD.

Having a relative with OCD “took a toll on all of us, but we had to do what we could to help,” says Marie, explaining how her daughter debated going to Switzerland to end her life before undergoing DBS.

Marie says her daughter is now back at university, but admits it’s still early days for the success of the treatment.

The UK’s health guidelines for obsessive compulsive disorder are 20 years old and are currently under review by NICE. In 2019, consensus was reached that policy regarding OCD treatment should reflect current technologies and possible new medications.

But OCD Action’s Leigh Wallbank says better funding is essential for young people to get the help they need.

“Policymakers and the government need to invest in OCD services. [OCD] “It is a crisis that can be prevented and changed.”

A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said the government had inherited a broken NHS where mental health services suffered after years of neglect, adding that funding had now been increased by £688 million.

But people with OCD, like Sophie, are afraid of what the future may bring.

The limited CBT treatment she was prescribed is coming to an end and she fears her symptoms will return.

“What do I do? What if it happens again?”