Effect of CBT on Metacognitive Beliefs in Depressive Disorders

Abstract

Metacognitive beliefs operate through cognitive attentional syndrome, where attention concentrated on negative automatic thoughts results in rumination. This perseverative thinking style manifesting in the form of rumination and worry intensifies depression. This study aims to assess the effect of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) on metacognitive beliefs, symptom severity, quality of life, and functionality. A pre-post study design comparing CBT-alone and CBT-with-medication was employed using purposive sampling to recruit 40 participants diagnosed with depressive disorders. All the participants received 10 sessions of CBT. Pre and post assessment measures were Beck Depression Inventory-II, Metacognitive Questionnaire-30, World Health Organization Quality of Life-Brief, and Global Assessment of Functioning. Paired t-test analysis revealed significant difference on outcome measures in both groups. Between-subject analysis revealed that the CBT-alone group was not significantly different in terms of improvement than CBT-with-medication group even when confounding variables were statistically controlled by way of testing analysis of covariance and propensity score match (nearest neighbour match).