Iranian Journal of Medical Sciences (Sep 2010)
Responsibility Attitudes in Obsessive-Compulsive Patients: The Contributions of Meta-Cognitive Beliefs and Worry
Abstract
Background: Obsessive patients are distressed by intrusivethoughts, which are related to unreal threats. These patientsfeel that they are responsible for harming themselves and others.While controlling worry and meta-cognitive beliefs, thepresent study aimed at comparing the responsibility attitudesin obsessive compulsive patients with those in normal subjectsto determine whether the difference in responsibility attitudesbetween two groups was significant.Methods: A group of 15 patients were compared with normalsubjects (n=15) who matched the patient group in terms ofgender, age and education. All subjects filled the ResponsibilityAttitude Scale, the Penn, State Worry Questionnaire andthe Meta-cognition Questionnaire -30. The findings were analyzedusing descriptive statistics as well as student t and ANCOVAtests.Results: Responsibility attitudes in obsessive patients weresignificantly higher than those in normal subjects (P<0.001),when patient worries and meta-cognitive beliefs were notcontrolled. However, after controlling patient's worry andmeta-cognitive beliefs there was no significant differencebetween responsibility attitudes in normal and obsessive–compulsive group.Conclusion: The findings might suggest that responsibilityattitude is not strongly related to obsessive-compulsive symptoms.It seems that it is a characteristic caused by basic metacognitivebeliefs, because the relationship between the responsibilityand the symptoms was dependent on meta-cognition.Therefore, in studying the etiology and treatment of obsessivecompulsive disorders focus on the responsibility attitudesalone cannot be very helpful.
