Metacognition, specific obsessive-compulsive beliefs and obsessive-compulsive behaviour

Cognitive distortions and beliefs have been found to be associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Most of these cognitive distortions are supposed to be non-specifically related to obsessive-compulsive behaviour in general, rather than specific domains of beliefs being related to specific forms of obsessive-compulsive behaviour. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether specific cognitive domains are related to specific obsessive-compulsive behaviours. In this study 305 subjects from the community completed a number of questionnaires assessing specific belief domains, obsessive-compulsive behaviour (Padua-R) and depressed mood (CES-D). Multiple regression analyses provided support for the notion that specific beliefs are associated with specific forms of obsessive-compulsive behaviour (i.e. washing, checking, precision, rumination and impulses). Further, as expected meta-cognition beliefs such as Thought-Action Fusion and Inverse Inference were found to be related to most forms of obsessive-compulsive behaviour. Depressed mood did not affect the results substantially. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.