Wilson's Disease Presenting with Obsessive-compulsive Disorder

Wilson's disease, a disorder of copper metabolism, is known to be associated with psychiatric symptoms. Psychiatrists see about 20% of these cases before they are labeled as Wilson's disease. Reports of these patients treated mistakenly as primary psychiatric illnesses exist in literature. This report thus emphasizes a thorough underpinning in this disease on the part of psychiatrists in order to arrive at the correct diagnosis at first contact. Besides this, the emergence of obsessive-compulsive symptoms in a case of Wilson's disease is described, which is a rare association. Finally, the authors discuss the role of basal ganglia in obsessive-compulsive disorder.