Metacognitive beliefs and processes in patients with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder and bipolar disorder

Metacognitive beliefs and processes are such as to be transdiagnostic and may show similar increases or deficiencies in different diagnostic groups. Individuals with psychotic disorders have poor metacognitive abilities, and this has an impact on functional, social and occupational outcomes in psychosis. In this study, it was aimed to investigate whether there are metacognitive deficits in schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder and bipolar disorder type 1, which are chronic mental disorders with psychotic episodes, whether the patient groups differ among themselves in terms of metacognitive beliefs and processes, and to evaluate the factors affecting metacognitive beliefs. Understanding all these processes is important for designing the treatment strategies, interventions to increase metacognitive capacity and development of social skills. A total of 150 patients who were not in an attack period, 50 with schizophrenia, 50 with bipolar disorder type-I with psychotic features, 50 with schizoaffective disorder diagnoses and 80 control groups without any psychiatric disease were included in our study. Sociodemographic and clinical data form,Metacognition Questionnaire-30(MCQ), Cognitive Attention Syndrome 1 Scale(CAS-1), Belief about Paranoia Scale(BaPS-SF), Measure of Common Responses to Unusual Experiences(MCR), Belief about Voices Questionnaire(BaVQ), The positive and negative syndrome scale (PANSS), Bipolar Depression Rating Scale (BDRS), Young Mania Rating Scale(YMDRS), Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale(HARS) were administered to all participants. When the groups were compared in terms of metacognitive beliefs and processes, a statistically significant difference was found between the patients group consisting of schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder and bipolar disorder type-1 and the control group in terms of metacognitive scale and subscale scores. When the metacognitive scale and subscale scores were compared between the patient groups, no statistically significant difference was found between the groups. When the relationship between metacognition scale total scores and clinical variables was examined, a positive significant correlation was found between the total number of attacks on the metacognition scale and the total number of psychotic attacks during the illness. There was a statistically significant positive correlation between psychopathology scale scores and metacognition scale scores. According to the results of the hierarchical regression analysis performed in our study, it was determined that working status had a predictive effect on metacognitive scales, except for the MCQ-30 total score. The PANSS total score had a predictive effect on except for MCR total score all metacognitive scale total scores. It is thought that this study provides data that can contribute to the literature in order to determine psychosocial interventions and interventions to increase metacognitive capacity by comparing the metacognitive processes between psychotic episodes and chronic mental disorders.