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OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to investigate the frequency and phenomenology of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and subclinical OCD in a non-referred population of young Polish adolescents. METHOD: A two stage ascertainment procedure (school screening and diagnostic evaluation) was used to identify affected individuals. In the first stage, 3,100 pupils were asked to complete the Polish version of the 20-item Leyton Obsessional Inventory-Child Version (LOI-CV). In the diagnostic stage, the presence of obsessions and compulsions was assessed with the author's structured interview questionnaire based on DSM-IV and ICD-10 diagnostic criteria for OCD; the Polish version of the Children's Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (CY-BOCS) was used to rate the symptom severity. RESULTS: A frequency of 0.38% was found for OCD and 2.7% for subclinical OCD. There was no significant difference in the phenomenology, demographic characteristic or socio-familial variables comparing the diagnosed OCD and subclinical OCD subjects. CONCLUSIONS: The identified OCD cases had characteristics similar to those of previously described clinical and non-referred samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]