Metacognitive and Meta-Emotional Styles in Patients With Alcohol and the Other Substance Dependence

Background: both alcohol and other substances are utilized for emotional and cognitive regulation. objectives: the purpose of the present study was to compare metacognitive styles and distress intolerance in patients with alcohol and other substance dependence. patients and methods: according to dsm-iv tr criteria, 45 patients with alcohol dependence (ad), 44 patients with substance dependence (sd), and 43 volunteers without ad or sd (control group) were enrolled. socio-demographic information form, distress tolerance scale (dts), and metacognitive questionaire-30 (mcq-30) were used to evaluate the participants. results: patients with ad had significantly lower “tolerance” subscale and total dts scores than those with sd and control group (p = 0.008 for sd sample and p = 0.004 for control group). patients with sd had significantly higher scores in “appraisal” subscale dts than control group (p = 0.005). patients of both ad and sd groups had significantly higher scores in “positive beliefs” subscale of mcq-30 than control group (p = 0.012 for ad group and p = 0. 001 for sd group). there was no significant difference between ad and sd groups in any mcq-30 subscale and total scores (p = 0.440). conclusions: metacognitive regulation strategies are more considerable prediction than emotional regulation strategies in sd group than in ad group. individuals with ad use alcohol as a means of both cognitive and emotional regulation strategy.