Individual Psychotherapy and Changes in Self-Experience in Schizophrenia: A Qualitative Comparison of Patients in Metacognitively Focused and Supportive Psychotherapy.

Objective: Deficits in metacognition, or the ability to form complex ideas about self and others, may be a root cause of dysfunction in schizophrenia. Accordingly, forms of psychotherapy have been proposed to address metacognitive deficits. This study explored whether metacognitively focused individual psychotherapy can affect self-experience by conducting narrative interviews of patients with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder enrolled in either metacognitively oriented psychotherapy (n = 12) or supportive psychotherapy (n = 13) in a naturalistic setting.