Comparative Efficacy of Metacognitive therapy versus Cognitive-Behavioral therapy on reducing the metacognitive beliefs, fusion beliefs, stop signals and control/threat beliefs in patient with washing obsession

Background: Due to the complex nature and varied symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder, different treatments have been used for OCD. Objective: The aim of this study was comparing the efficacy of cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) and meta-cognitive therapy (MCT) on reducing metacognitive beliefs, fusion beliefs, internal stop signals and control/threat beliefs. Method: To do so, 6 women with OCD (pure washing), were selected based on the structured clinical interview for DSM-IV (SCID), and were assigned randomly to CBT or MCT group. In each group, patients received the relevant therapies in 12 one-hour sessions. Research tools included Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory (OCI-R), stop signals questionnaire (SSQ), thought fusion inventory (TFI) and metacognition questionnaire-30 (MCQ-30) that were completed by patients in pretest, posttest, follow up 1 and follow up 2. Finally, data was analyzed both individually and in group. In individual analysis, we used diagrams, visual analysis and calculating the effect size, while in group analysis, the analysis of variance with one between group factor (two group of therapies) and one within group factor (time of tests) was used. Result: The results indicated that metacognitive therapy was more effective than cognitive-behavioral therapy in reducing the metacognitive beliefs, fusion beliefs and internal stop signals. However, cognitive-behavioral therapy was more effective than metacognitive therapy in reducing the control/threat beliefs. Conclusion: Considering these results, it can be suggested that overall, metacognitive therapy is more appropriate for reducing the obsessive symptoms. However, definitive conclusion about the efficacy of these therapies requires more studies.