Metacognitive training for negative symptoms- support for the cognitive model.

Developing effective treatment options for negative symptoms of psychotic disorders remains a major unmet treatment need and area for further research. In a recent uncontrolled study by Swanson et al., (2021), Metacognition Training (MCT) for negative symptoms was found to lead to fewer negative symptoms, less stigma and increased self-rated reflective ability. As the analysis examined negative symptoms as a whole, we here performed an additional analysis on individual negative symptom items as recent research has suggested that negative symptoms are best conceptualised through a five-factor-model. It was found that the intervention led to changes specifically on sociality and blunted affect (with large effect sizes) which might reflect changes in both intra- and interpersonal (meta) cognitive processes.