Cognitive Self-Awareness and Episodic Memory in Patients with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Healthy Individuals

Background & Aims: Recent studies have indicated memory dysfunction in individuals with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). The present study aimed to examine the relationship between cognitive selfawareness and episodic memory performance in patients with OCD and healthy individuals. Methods: In the present study, 30 patients with OCD and 30 normal individuals in the Shiraz Professional Center of Psychiatry, Shiraz, Iran, were randomly selected. The Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS), clinical interview, Wells' Metacognitions Questionnaire, and verbal, function, and mental imagination encoding were used. In order to compare groups in terms of episodic memory and cognitive self–awareness and investigate the relationship between variables, MANOVA and the mediation analysis were, respectively, used. Results: Findings showed lower episodic memory performance in participants with OCD, but indicated higher cognitive self-awareness in these individuals as compared with normal subjects. Moreover, episodic memory performance played a mediator role between cognitive self-awareness and OCD. Conclusion: High self-awareness in individuals with OCD explains both obsessional pathology and decreasing of episodic memory performance. Metacognition treatments can decrease self-awareness and increase thought control.