Autobiographical memory and metacognition in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder and social anxiety

Cognitive deficits in anxiety disorders is one of the topics which has faced with increasing evidence in recent years. The purpose of this study was to compare autobiographical memory and metacognition in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD), and normal group. In this descriptive-analytical study, three 22-individual groups of the patients with OCD and SAD, and normal people were enrolled per convenient sampling. The testees underwent autobiographical memory interview (semantic childhood, semantic adulthood, childhood events, adulthood events, and recent events) and filled out metacognition questionnaire (positive beliefs about worry, uncontrollability and risk, cognitive confidence, need for thoughts control, and cognitive self-awareness). By the results, for memory, the OCD group showed weaker performance compared with normal participants (P<0.01). Also, for metacognition, the OCD group showed weaker performance in uncontrollability and risk, and cognitive confidence compared with normal participants and SAD patients (P<0.01). The OCD group showed weaker performance in autobiographical memory compared with SAD group and normal participants, which seems to be due to neuropsychological deficits in OCD and also cognitive beliefs have an important role in the symptoms of anxiety disorders. Clinically, identifying cognitive aspects of anxiety disorders will lead to emergence of a new insight into this disorder so that the available therapeutic approaches could be modified appropriate to its characteristics or new therapeutic approaches could be developed.