Memory Complaints and Memory Deficits in Young and Old Psychiatric Inpatients

Abstract

Memory complaints and memory deficits were investigated in 206 consecutively admitted psychiatric inpatients at the University of Iowa Psychiatric Hospital. Forty-five percent of patients over age 60 years and 29% of patients less than 60 years old had severe memory complaints. Patients with complaints of memory loss were no more likely than patients without such complaints to have a memory deficit. In patients over age 60 years, memory complaint was more common in depression than in dementing and amnestic disorders (73% v 43%), while in younger patients memory complaint was slightly more common in dementing and amnestic disorders than in depression (57% v 41%). Increasing age was significantly correlated with increasing likelihood of memory complaint for depressed patients but not for nondepressed patients. As a result of these findings, memory complaint was found to be a statistically significant marker for depression in the elderly (sensitivity = 73%, specificity = 75%) but not in younger patients. Our results confirm the clinical observation that memory complaints are a useful marker for depressed states in the elderly.

Is a patient‐administered depression rating scale valid for detecting cognitive deficits in patients with major depressive disorder?

“…did not identify which of the subdomains of the BDI are correlated with objective neuropsychological assessments 34 . In contrast to these results, some studies have shown that memory complaints are associated with depressive symptoms 35–37 but not with all domains of neuropsychological measurements, particularly psychomotor speed measures 38 . These inconsistent results may be due to the use of different symptom checklists or different subdomains in the different studies.…”

Defining and Measuring Functional Recovery from Depression

“…Cognitive function, for example, is more often assessed by objective neuropsychological tests that quantify performance; however, the relationship between this performance and self-reported cognitive complaints is not well understood, as some data suggest a discrepancy between the two, [80][81][82] whereas other studies report some degree of consistency. [83,84] Unfortunately, many of these studies have focused predominantly on older individuals, with much less information available on younger depressed subjects. Sleep is another functional outcome that can be readily assessed by both self-report and objective measures.…”

Do subjective memory complaints precede dementia? A three‐year follow‐up of patients with supposed ‘benign senescent forgetfulness’

“…Others have shown that memory complaint and impaired performance on objective psychological tests are poorly correlated (Sunderland et af., 1986;Derouesne et al, 1989;Rabbitt and Abson, 1990;Bolla et al 1991). One explanation for this discrepancy may be the presence of depression (Chandler and Gerndt, 1988;Bolla et al, 1991). Derouesne et al (1989) found that memory complaint was strongly correlated with self-reported depression even among those with low depression scores.…”