gms | German Medical Science

Aim: The MBT advanced training is offered for therapists in the clinical area at the psychiatric department, SMZ-Sued (Vienna). Through this certified advanced training, individual and group therapy can be offered in everyday clinical practice. It is supervised during a period of two years. The aim of this project is to answer the following questions:

• Is MASC able to quantify the mentalizing capacity of the therapists?
• Does the mentalization ability change through the MBT-training?
• Which positive and negative changes in clinical practice and in the private sector are perceived by the participants?

Methods: MASC - the Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition is a video-based test. It shows an everyday dinner scene and is paused a total of 45 times to ask the participants questions about the feelings, thoughts and intentions of the actors. The MASC can be carried out in the group by means of a questionnaire. These completed questionnaires are evaluated with the scoring key. Correct answers receive 1 point and incorrect answers are scored in one of three ways: ToM excessive, ToM less, ToM No.

Results: The current MBT-training is a still ongoing course. The evaluation of the MASC-test of the participants at the beginning of MBT-training shows an above-average mentalization capacity in the group and a different response to social situations in the film as well.

Discussion: To what extent is the above-average mentalizing capacity of the MBT participants due to their professional experience and age? Which other factors are relevant, allegiance, attitudes?