ABSTRACT
Social, affective and cognitive impairments and disabilities are major challenges confronting persons committed to providing mental health and psychiatric rehabilitation services to persons with severe mental illness (SMI). These impairments and disabilities play a central role in the inadequate social functioning that the DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) requires for all mental illness diagnoses. According to recent theories of schizophrenia and other SMI, impairments of metacognition (i.e. empathy, theory of mind, TOM, mind reading) are major sources of these communication and interpersonal limitations (Frith, 1992; Lee, 2007).
