Evaluation of efficacy of social cognitive training in improvement of socioemotional processes throughout therapeutic process in an inpatients.

Introduction: Social cognitive deficits (e.g. emotion perception, empathy, and theory of mind) seem to play crucial role in the symptoms persistence of anorexia nervosa (AN). Objectives: Aim of study was to verify the therapeutic efficacy of cultural adaptation of Social Cognitive Training (SCT) in socioemotional improvement of patients with AN. Methods: Participants. The participants were 60 healthy controls (HCs) and 60 AN patients, examined at the beginning and at the end of 12-week-long hospitalization. Half of them was offered treatment as usual (TAU) while the other half -TAU + SCT. Measures. The clinical variables were measured using: The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, The Eating Attitude Test, The Beck Depression Inventory, The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and The Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). Social cognitive deficits were assessed using: Penn Emotion Recognition/Discrimination, and Acuity Tasks, Penn Facial Memory, and Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RME). Results: At the beginning both groups of patients presented with high level of clinical psychopathology and social cognitive deficits which decreased significantly throughout therapy however most of the measured variables did not reach the level presented by HCs, apart from: sad recognition, reaction time for happy recognition, emotion discrimination time for happy and sad in TAU + SCT group. Overall, TAU + SCT group showed significantly higher improvement compared to the TAU group in: sad recognition, fear and anger recognition, sad discrimination, RT happy recognition, and ToM after treatment. Conclusions: SCT appeared promising therapeutic tool in remediation of social cognitive functioning in AN. Project funded by National Science Centre NCN 2014/15/B/HS6/01847. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]