The authors of this article address an interesting question: the repercussion on mothers of the symptoms experienced by their children with atopic dermatitis. The objective of the study and the hypothesis advanced are interesting, although ultimately the results were not significant except in the case of physical functioning scores. This result may have been due to the fact that, rather than assessing mental suffering or anxiety, the authors chose to assess the symptoms of a specific psychiatric disorder—obsessive-compulsive syndrome. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is classified as a neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorder in the 10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases (ICD-10)1 and is included in the section on obsessive compulsive and related disorders in the 5th revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).2 It affects between 1% and 3% of the general population3 and is characterized by the presence of obsessions and/or compulsions. Obsessions are persistent and recurrent thoughts, impulses, or images that the patient experiences as intrusive and unwanted. Compulsions are repetitive behaviors or mental acts that a person feels driven to carry out in response to an obsession or in accordance with rules that he or she must apply rigidly. Obsessions and compulsions give rise to intense anxiety in these patients, being recognized as absurd and inevitable. While stressful situations, such as those described in the article by Gunduz et al.4 in this issue, will exacerbate these symptoms, in theory, this will only happen in individuals who have been diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder. However, the exclusion from this study of mothers who had previously taken any neuropsychiatric medication could create a bias that might explain the negative result obtained.