Neuro-Cognition in Adolescents with Dissociative Disorder: A Study from a Tertiary Care Center of North India

BACKGROUND: Dissociative disorder is a common neurotic disorder. Patients with dissociative disorder experience significant psychological distress and have deficits in various domains of neurocognitive functions. OBJECTIVE: To assess the neurocognitive functioning of adolescents diagnosed with dissociative disorder and compare it with that of healthy controls. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is a cross-sectional observational study conducted on adolescents diagnosed with dissociative disorder, attending child and adolescent specialty clinic of a tertiary care hospital of North India from October 2016 to February 2017. Healthy control subjects were also recruited for comparison on study variables. Malin's Intelligence Scale for Indian children and standardized neuropsychological tools were administered for the assessment of intellectual functioning and neurocognitive functioning. RESULTS: A total of 50 participants with dissociative disorder and 50 healthy controls completed the study. Participants of both the groups had an average level of intellectual functioning. Participants with dissociative disorder showed poorer performance on tasks of attention and executive functions. After the Bonferroni correction, deficits were detected in the domains of coding (P = 0.0012), maze (P = 0.0001), and mathematics (P = 0.0016). CONCLUSIONS: Adolescents with dissociative disorder have impaired neurocognitive functions in comparison to healthy controls.