Steffen Moritz is head of the neuropsychology facility at the University Medical Center Hamburg (Germany). Among his responsibilities are the neurocognitive assessment of patients with psychological disorders and the development of low-threshold psychological treatments.
He has published as first author in top-tier journals such as JAMA Psychiatry and Schizophrenia Bulletin. Among other achievements, he has received the NARSAD Young Investigator award twice and the NARSAD Independent Investigator award once.
His current research is focused on cognitive biases in schizophrenia, that is, distortions in decision-making (e.g., jumping to conclusions). Most notably among his contributions to the field, he was the first to describe overconfidence in memory errors in schizophrenia and has put forth a novel ‘liberal acceptance’ theory to explain the pathogenesis of delusional ideation.
Prof. Moritz has successfully translated this line of research into the treatment program Metacognitive Training for Schizophrenia (MCT), which is now available in 37 languages at no cost via www.uke.de/mct. He also developed an individualized metacognitive therapy for patients with schizophrenia (MCT+) and adapted it to the E-Cog learning platform. A number of randomized controlled studies assert the safety and efficacy of these programs (see meta-analysis by Sauvé et al., 2020: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2020.101854).
Although cognitive interventions are regarded as important complementary treatment strategies, there is a dearth of evaluated and easy-to-administer programs for schizophrenia. MCT and MCT+ promise to fill that gap.