Neuropsychological test performance among major clinical subtypes of depression

Thirty-six patients with diagnoses of major depression were administered rhe Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery. Comparisons were made on six di-chotomous subtypes of depression: agitated-nonagirated, endogenous-nonen-dogenous, primary-secondary, psychotic-nonpsychoric, retarded-nonretarded, and unipolar-bipolar. The psychotic depressives were more impaired than the nonpsychotics on Ihe Profile Elevation and Impairment scales. No differences were foundfor other subtype comparisons on these global measures of neuropsy-chological dysfunction. Analysis of age effects indicated that older depressives performed more slowly on rimed performance items and significant subtype differences on these items occurred for subtype diagnoses of psychotic. primary, and retarded depression. Localizalion and Lateralizarion scales revealed signifi-cant impairment for the psychotic and retarded patients, with less impairmen! for other subtypes. The relevance of these findings for neuropsychological evalu-ation are discussed, particularly with regard to the potentially confounding ef-fects of depression on lest performance. Previous research has suggested that depression can be associated with defi-cits in neuropsychological test performance (Goulet Fischer, Sweet, &amp