P01-77 - Working Memory Impairments in Patients with Major Depressive Disorder (M.D.D)

Objectives Since it has been shown that depressed individuals experience deficits in executive cognitive functions, current study investigates the impairments of working memory in patients suffering from major depressive disorder (M.D.D) in comparison with normal control group in terms of DSM-IV criteria. Method The two groups (25 patients and 25 normal) were matched via gender, age and education. All completed Beck Depression Inventory and participated in two working memory tasks: “Paced Auditory Serial Adding Test (PASAT)” and “Wechsler Digit Span Scale”. Results Using T test for independent groups, the results indicated that the patient group were experiencing significant impairments in working memory in comparison with control group(p< 0.0001) and results of Regression Analysis showed that severity of depression has a significant effect on the amount of impairments that subjects had experienced in working memory. Conclusion Depression had impaired working memory performance in individuals and the amount of impairment will increase as the severity of depressive symptoms are increasing.