Introduction: Core features of psychotic disorders seem represented by Jumping to Conclusions, JTC, bias or inaccuracy in emotion recognition and theory of mind abilities, underlying the formation and maintenance of delusions and hallucinations, with a negative impact on the person's social functioning. In line with existing knowledge, cognitive biases are observed along the continuum of psychosis, from psychotic-like experiences to full-blown psychosis. A poorer performance in metacognition can be seen as a marker of developing a psychotic illness and confirms the potential value of assessing metacognitive beliefs in individuals vulnerable to psychosis.
Purpose: To explore whether the metacognitive approach in early psychosis offers a promising perspective in early intervention by focusing on improving metacognitive competence to prevent psychotic crises (Baumgartner et al., 2020).
Method: A literature search of published literature since 2010 was conducted to investigate the efficacy of Metacognitive Training (MCT) (Moritz et al., 2010) on different stages of psychosis.
Results: Concerning the appropriate treatment of cognitive biases in psychotic users and individuals with recent onset of psychosis, several studies and meta-analyses confirmed the efficacy of MCT on positive symptoms, neurocognition, cognitive insight, cognitive biases, and social functioning. Also, MCT showed promising outcomes in young at-risk mental states, ARMS, population, and in young subjects in the early stages of psychosis independently by their Duration of Untreated Psychosis over two years (Ussorio et al., 2016).
Conclusions: MCT seems to be a promising treatment in clinical practice, taking into account the positive results in cognitive insight improvement that may act to improve treatment adherence and prevent psychotic episodes. A future web adaptation of MCT could represent a challenge in reaching more young users at high risk of transit to psychosis.