Background: Psychomotor retardation (PR) is one of the core features in depression according to DSM V (1), but also aging in itself causes cognitive and psychomotor slowing. This is the first study investigating PR in relation to cognitive functioning and to the concomitant effect of depression and aging in a geriatric population ruling out contending effects of psychotropic medication.Methods: A group of 28 non-demented depressed elderly is compared to a matched control group of 20 healthy elderly. All participants underwent a test battery containing clinical depression measures, cognitive measures of processing speed, executive function and memory, clinical ratings of PR, and objective computerized fine motor skill-tests. Statistical analysis consisted of a General Linear Method multivariate analysis of variance to compare the clinical, cognitive, and psychomotor outcomes of the two groups.Results: Patients performed worse on all clinical, cognitive, and PR measures. Both groups showed an effect of cognitive load on fine motor function but the influence was significantly larger for patients than for healthy elderly except for the initiation time.Limitations: Due to the restrictive inclusion criteria, only a relatively limited sample size could be obtained.Conclusion: With a medication free sample, an additive effect of depression and aging on cognition and PR in geriatric patients was found. As this effect was independent of demand of effort (by varying the cognitive load), it was apparently not a motivational slowing effect of depression.

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Please be advised that this information was generated on 2018-05-09 and may be subject to change. Background: Psychomotor retardation (PR) is one of the core features in depression according to DSM V (1), but also aging in itself causes cognitive and psychomotor slowing. This is the first study investigating PR in relation to cognitive functioning and to the concomitant effect of depression and aging in a geriatric population ruling out contending effects of psychotropic medication. PSYCHIATRY ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE Methods:A group of 28 non-demented depressed elderly is compared to a matched control group of 20 healthy elderly. All participants underwent a test battery containing clinical depression measures, cognitive measures of processing speed, executive function and memory, clinical ratings of PR, and objective computerized fine motor skill-tests. Statistical analysis consisted of a General Linear Method multivariate analysis of variance to compare the clinical, cognitive, and psychomotor outcomes of the two groups. Results:Patients performed worse on all clinical, cognitive, and PR measures. Both groups showed an effect of cognitive load on fine motor function but the influence was significantly larger for patients than for healthy elderly except for the initiation time.Limitations: Due to the restrictive inclusion criteria, only a relatively limited sample size could be obtained. Conclusion:With a medication free sample, an additive effect of depression and aging on cognition and PR in geriatric patients was found. As this effect was independent of demand of effort (by varying the cognitive load), it was apparently not a motivational slowing effect of depression.

Computational language analysis can be a useful tool in the assessment of schizophrenia, which is currently for a large part subjective. Given the observed relations of language use with thought disorders, language analysis could play an important role in making the as-sessment more objective. We provide an overview of linguistic features implicated in schizophrenia that can be automatically ana-lyzed in a robust and accurate way given the current state of the art in natural language processing, and describe an explorative pilot study testing these features in the analysis of the language use of one schizophrenic patient.

The Differentiation-Relatedness Scale (DRS) is a reliable and valid 10-level scale designed to rate levels of personality functioning on narrative descriptions of self and significant others. However, to date, most studies of the DRS have been done in clinical samples. Little is known about its psychometric properties in nonclinical samples. This study examined linear and potential categorical relationships of DRS with demographic features and with indices of intrapersonal and interpersonal functioning (i.e., depressive and dissociative symptoms, dependent and self-critical personality features, and warmth, conflict and depth of intimate relationships), in a nonclinical sample of young adults (N = 333). It also investigated the unidimensionality of the DRS in the relationships between the level of self-representation (DR-S) and representation of the mother (DR-M) and father (DR-F), and the relationship of DR-S with disruptions in the balance between differentiation and relatedness assumed to underlie low levels of DR-S. Results showed little evidence for dimensional relationships between levels of DRS and indices of intrapersonal and interpersonal functioning. By contrast, a cutoff of DRS level 6 clearly differentiated young adults at risk for psychopathology from those with more adaptive levels of functioning. Moreover, the DRS seems not to be a unidimensional scale. The implications of these findings for future search and the clinical use of the DRS are discussed.