A study of severity of neurocognitive dysfunction in patients with depression attending tertiary care hospital

BACKGROUND: Neurocognitive functions are defined as mental activities that are necessary for obtaining, processing, storage and retrieval for information. Cognitive functions include a set of skills such as attention, learning, memory, verbal ability, logical thinking, problem solving etc. Depression is considered not only to have an affective component but also causes neurocognitive impairment. This clinical feature is called “pseudodementia” or depressive dementia AIM: To assess the severity of neurocognitive dysfunction in patients with depression and co-relate it with the severity of depression. METHODS: This is cross sectional study conducted at Mediciti Institute of medical sciences a tertiary care hospital conducted over a period of 6months.The study sample included patients with depression using Hamilton depression rating scale (HAM-D) and post graduate institute memory scale (PGIMS) scales. RESULTS: There is a significant prevalence of females (56.70%) in the study population and also a significant prevalence of younger age was found in the study population between 21-30 years of age-14(46.6%). The statistical analysis shows significant co-relation between depression and severity of neurocognitive dysfunction; chi square- 5.27; p value- 0.02. CONCLUSION: This study shows significant co-relation between depression and severity of neurocognitive dysfunction.