Saman Abdollahzadeh Davani, Mehdi Imani

Abstract

Introduction: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is one the most common psychiatric disorders in today’s society and specific beliefs of people about this disorder are related to the structures of scrupulosity, thought-action fusion (TAF), and feeling guilty. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between feeling guilty and thought-action fusion by mediating obsessive-compulsive and scrupulosity among obsessive-compulsive patients. Method: The method of this study was path analysis. The population of this study was 35 patients with obsession and 35 normal subjects who were chosen through the purposive sampling method. After the diagnosis of their psychiatric disorder, the participants completed the Persian version of a 4-scale self-report questionnaire (thought-action fusion questionnaire, scrupulosity questionnaire, feeling guilty questionnaire, and Maudsley obsessive-compulsive scale). Results: The findings showed that (1) feeling guilty by mediating scrupulosity has a significant indirect effect on thought-action fusion in patients with obsession; (2) feeling guilty by mediating obsessive-compulsive has a significant indirect effect on thought-action fusion in patients with obsession. Discussion: It seems that feeling guilty along with scrupulosity and obsessive-compulsive can lead to thought-action fusion, and increases nonsense beliefs (likelihood and moral thought-action fusion) in people with obsession.