Misinterpretations of intrusions, obsessive beliefs and thought control strategies in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder

Objective: Misinterpretations of intrusive experiences are suggested to play critical role in the development and maintenance of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Some faulty belief domains are also assumed to contribute to the immediate misappraisal of intrusions and thus, patients with OCD try to control their thoughts with various thought control strategies. This study aims to examine these cognitive concepts among Turkish patients with OCD and comparatively review the psychometric characteristics of three instruments in clinical samples. Methods: The sample of the study was constituted of patients with OCD and any other anxiety disorders and undergraduate university students as control group. An instrument set on immediate misinterpretations, beliefs, control strategies, responsibility attitudes, fusions of thoughts and actions, thought suppression, OCD symptoms, self-esteem and personality characteristics was administered to the sample. Results: Having acceptable reliability values, instrument tools of immediate interpretations, beliefs and thought control methods were found to be higher in OCD patients. These three factors were found to be significantly associated with other relevant cognitive correlates, while they were not related to some other factors such as psychoticism. Conclusion: These findings show that misinterpretations of intrusions, beliefs and control methods are also valid concepts in Turkish clinical samples that live in a different cultural context, and the self-report instruments of these cognitive factors were shown to display satisfactory psychometric properties

PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF THE TURKISH VERSION OF THE ACCEPTANCE AND ACTION QUESTIONNAIRE-II (AAQ-II)

The aim of the study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Turkish version of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (AAQ-II). This instrument was designed to assess psychological inflexibility, a key construct in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). The participants were 291 university students. The test-retest stage was conducted with 80 participants over a 2-month period. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) supported a one-factor model with seven items. Internal consistency was high (.88) and test-retest reliability was good (.78). Higher AAQ-II scores were associated with higher levels of depression, anxiety, and thought suppression supporting the concurrent and convergent validity. This study provides further evidence of the improvement shown by the 7-item version of the AAQ-II in terms of psychometric properties compared with the previous versions. Our results suggest that the Turkish version of the AAQ-II is a reliable and valid measure of psychological inflexibility

Hyperfocusing as a dimension of adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Patients with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) suffer not only from inability to focus but also from inability to shift attention for events that trigger their interests. This phenomenon is called ``hyperfocusing{''}. Previous literature about hyperfocusing is scarce and relies mainly on case reports. The study aimed to investigate and compare the severity of hyperfocusing in adult ADHD with and without psycho-stimulant use. ADHD (DSM-IV-TR) patients either psycho-stimulant naive (n = 53) or on psycho-stimulants (n = 79) from two ADHD clinics were recruited. The control group (n = 65) consisted of healthy university students. A socio-demographic form, the Beck Depression Inventory, the Wender-Utah Rating Scale, the Adult ADHD Self- Report Scale and the Hyperfocusing Scale were applied to the participants. There was no difference between total Hyperfocusing Scale and Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale scores of two patient groups, but both have higher scores than controls (p < 0.001). Hyperfocusing is higher in adult ADHD and there was no difference between stimulant-naive patients or patients on stimulants. Hyperfocusing can be defined as a separate dimension of adult ADHD. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved