ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Behav. Neurosci.
Sec. Pathological Conditions
This article is part of the Research TopicCognitive impairments in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression: Dissecting common and divergent featuresView all 11 articles
Transdiagnostic Relevance of Subjective Cognitive Complaints: A Validation and Population-Based Study Using Two Canadian Scales (SSTICS and MoCA) in the UAE
Provisionally accepted
- 1United Arab Emirates University College of Medicine and Health Sciences, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates
- 2psychiatry, Montreal University, Montreal, quebec, Canada
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ABSTRACT Background: Cognitive disorders span several diagnostic categories in psychiatry, but subjective cognitive complaints (SCC) remain underutilized in transdiagnostic assessments, particularly in Arab contexts. These difficulties can also be present in Affective disorder illnesses are assessed using neuropsychological tests. Self-assessments are useful for understanding difficulties from the user's perspective. The Subjective Scale to Investigate Cognition in Schizophrenia (SSTICS) is a rating scale designed to measure subjective cognitive complaints in persons with schizophrenia. This study explores the SSTIC-E, a culturally adapted tool, highlighting its cross-diagnostic relevance over simple psychometric validation. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted among 210 participants (126 patients, 84 controls) in the United Arab Emirates. Patients met ICD-10/DSM-5 criteria for schizophrenia spectrum disorders and affective disorders, in addition to other psychiatric disorders. The instruments included the SSTIC-E and the MoCA. Analysis focused on internal consistency, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and transdiagnostic comparisons. Results: Patients reported higher SSTIC-E scores than controls (mean = 34.06 vs. 22.55, p < 0.001). MoCA scores confirmed decreased objective performance in patients (mean = 22.71 vs. 27.19, p < 0.001). The SSTIC-E has excellent reliability (α = 0.89). No significant differences were observed in SCCs between the schizophrenia and affective disorder groups. CFA analysis confirmed a one-factor model with residual item correlations (CFI = 0.91, RMSEA = 0.058). Women reported higher SCC; age had no effect. Discussion: The SSTIC-E demonstrates utility beyond diagnostic silos, providing a valuable and culturally relevant instrument for transdiagnostic psychiatric assessment in
Keywords: Subjective cognitive complains, SSTICS, MOCA, Cognition, Schizophrenia, Affective disorder
Received: 31 Jul 2025; Accepted: 20 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Al Mugaddam, Abdel Aziz, Javaid, Nauman, Elbarazi and Stip. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Emmanuel Stip, emmanuel.stip@umontreal.ca
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