Effect of metacognitive training applied on depression and cognitive distortion levels of depression patients

This research was carried out in a pre-test-post-test, semi-experimental design with control group in order to determine the effect on depression and cognitive distortion levels of metacognitive training applied to depression patients. Patients applied to a psychiatry outpatient clinic of public hospital and have been diagnosed with depression for at least 6 months constituted population and total of 77 patients, 38 experimental and 39 control groups matching with the research criteria constituted sample of the study. The data were collected by 'Personal Information Form', 'Beck Depression Inventory (BDI)' and 'Cognitive Distortion Scale (CDS)'. Metacognitive training was applied once a week 8 sessions in total, as group training. In the pre-education evaluation, it was observed that cognitive distortions were frequently used by the experimental and control groups and depression levels of patients were high. As a result of the analysis; in the pretest, there was no significant difference between the mean score of BDI and CDS of the patients in the experimental and the control groups (p> 0.05). In the post-test, it was determined that the mean score of BDI and CDS of experimental groups decreased significantly compared to control groups (p<0.05). In the in-group comparisons, the mean scores of BDI and CDS of mid-test and posttest of experimental group patients decreased significantly compared to the pre-test (p<0.05). In the in-group comparisons of the control group; in the post-test the mean scores of BDI decreased significantly (p<0.05), while no significant change was observed in the mean scores of the CDS (p>0.05). Metacognitive training was found to be effective in reducing depression and cognitive distortions levels of patients. It is recommended to apply metacognitive training in depression treatment by psychiatric nurses.