Meta-cognitive profiles in anxiety disorders

This study had two distinct objectives. First, to examine the relationships between meta-cognitions and anxiety disorders. Second, to identify specific meta-cognitions as unique predictors of generalized anxiety (GAD), depression (DD) and obsessive–compulsive (OCD) disorders. A total of 180 cases were analyzed using the Meta-cognitions Questionnaire (MCQ), Anxious Thoughts Inventory (AnTI), and the Thought Control Questionnaire (TCQ). The results suggest that all the five types of negative metacognitive beliefs measured by the MCQ are significantly correlated with one another and with AnTI and TCQ scores except for cognitive self-consciousness, which failed to correlate with TCQ scores. Multivariate analysis revealed that the clinical cases differed from normal subjects in their beliefs about uncontrollability and danger, beliefs about cognitive competence, and general negative beliefs. Only OCD patients differed from both normal subjects and GAD patients in their cognitive self-consciousness. Health worry was elevated in GAD patients, while meta-worry was elevated in OCD patients. Furthermore, depressives tended to use worry while OCD patients tended to use distraction as meta-cognitive strategies to control intrusive and distressing thoughts. Discriminant analysis was performed with GAD, DD and OCD as dependent variables and the MCQ, AnTI and TCQ subscales as predictor variables. Overall the discriminant functions successfully predicted outcome for over 70% of cases. Findings provide support for the Self-Regulatory Executive Function model.