Semantic Linkages of Obsessions From an International Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Mobile App Data Set: Big Data Analytics Study

Background Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by recurrent intrusive thoughts, urges, or images (obsessions) and repetitive physical or mental behaviors (compulsions). Previous factor analytic and clustering studies suggest the presence of three or four subtypes of OCD symptoms. However, these studies have relied on predefined symptom checklists, which are limited in breadth and may be biased toward researchers’ previous conceptualizations of OCD. Objective In this study, we examine a large data set of freely reported obsession symptoms obtained from an OCD mobile app as an alternative to uncovering potential OCD subtypes. From this, we examine data-driven clusters of obsessions based on their latent semantic relationships in the English language using word embeddings. Methods We extracted free-text entry words describing obsessions in a large sample of users of a mobile app, NOCD. Semantic vector space modeling was applied using the Global Vectors for Word Representation algorithm. A domain-specific extension, Mittens, was also applied to enhance the corpus with OCD-specific words. The resulting representations provided linear substructures of the word vector in a 100-dimensional space. We applied principal component analysis to the 100-dimensional vector representation of the most frequent words, followed by k-means clustering to obtain clusters of related words. Results We obtained 7001 unique words representing obsessions from 25,369 individuals. Heuristics for determining the optimal number of clusters pointed to a three-cluster solution for grouping subtypes of OCD. The first had themes relating to relationship and just-right; the second had themes relating to doubt and checking; and the third had themes relating to contamination, somatic, physical harm, and sexual harm. All three clusters showed close semantic relationships with each other in the central area of convergence, with themes relating to harm. An equal-sized split-sample analysis across individuals and a split-sample analysis over time both showed overall stable cluster solutions. Words in the third cluster were the most frequently occurring words, followed by words in the first cluster. Conclusions The clustering of naturally acquired obsessional words resulted in three major groupings of semantic themes, which partially overlapped with predefined checklists from previous studies. Furthermore, the closeness of the overall embedded relationships across clusters and their central convergence on harm suggests that, at least at the level of self-reported obsessional thoughts, most obsessions have close semantic relationships. Harm to self or others may be an underlying organizing theme across many obsessions. Notably, relationship-themed words, not previously included in factor-analytic studies, clustered with just-right words. These novel insights have potential implications for understanding how an apparent multitude of obsessional symptoms are connected by underlying themes. This observation could aid exposure-based treatment approaches and could be used as a conceptual framework for future research.