Cognitive insight and psychosis

Cognitive insight is the ability to self-reflect, realise that beliefs may be mistaken and consider feedback from other people. Lack of it is thought to play an important role in the development and continuation of psychosis, and a team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the Institute of Psychology, King's College London looked into the influence of cognitive insight on the progress of 78 outpatients being treated for psychosis with cognitive behaviour therapy. They found that people with more cognitive insight had less severe delusions after treatment and that people whose cognitive insight improved over the course of their treatment had 'clinically significant reductions' in the severity of both delusions and auditory hallucinations by the end of their therapy.

Perivoliotis, Dimitri ... [et al] - Cognitive insight predicts favourable outcome in cognitive behavioral therapy for psychosis Psychosis February 2010, 2(1), 23-33