The factors affecting metacognition in schizophrenia

Background: The metacognitive capacity in patients with schizophrenia are known to be inadequate. Belong to the researches about this poor capacity, factors such as neurocognitive performance, binding characteristics, family attitudes, childhood trauma have come to the fore. Although a number of studies that evaluated these factors in schizophrenia patients, there is no study about discussing all the factors in siblings of patients with schizophrenia. Aim: In this study, to determine the level of metacognition in schizophrenia patients, siblings and to compare them with healthy controls and aimed at the same time to examine the factors affecting metacognition in schizophrenia patients. Material and Methods: 35 schizophrenic patients and their siblings age, gender matched control group of 35 healthy people were included in the study. Sociodemographic data form, MCQ-30, WAIS-R vocabulary subtest, WCST, PANSS, BIS, CTQ-28, ECR-II, EMBU-s, PBI scale has been applied to all subjects participating in the study. Results: Patients were found to be less successful than the healthy siblings and healthy controls and these differences reached statistical significance in all scales. But the difference between the healthy siblings group and the healthy control group did not reach statistical significance. Neurocognitive capacity, insecure attachment, negative or negatively perceived attitudes of family, childhood trauma has been identified as factors affecting metacognition in patients with schizophrenia. Conclusions: Metacognitive capacity in patients with schizophrenia were more poorly than healthy siblings and healthy controls, knowledge of the factors affecting the metacognitive performance gives direction to initiatives that aimed at increasing the metacognitive capacity and will benefit in many functional areas such as treatment compliance, social life adaptation of the patients. Keywords:Metacognition, Schizophrenia, Neurocognition, Attachment