The impact of depressive symptomology, rumination and objective memory performance on subjective cognitive complaints

Cognitive impairment in depression can present as subjective or objective, but the intensity of the former is higher and is not correlated with the deficits measured in neuropsychological tests. We hypothesised that rumination would be associated with subjective cognitive impairment.

The study was performed through the online PsyToolkit platform. It included 168 healthy people and 93 people with depression. To examine memory, a recognition-type task was used with emotionally charged words as the stimulus. Depression symptoms were measured using the Beck Depression Inventory-II, subjective cognitive impairment with the Perceived Deficits Questionnaire-20, and intensity of rumination with the Polish Questionnaire of Rumination.

MDD patients had significantly higher levels of depression symptoms, rumination, and subjective cognitive deficits than the control group. In the memory task, the MDD group had a higher error rate than the control group. In hierarchical regression analysis, depression and rumination were found to be significant predictors of subjective cognitive impairment, whereas objective memory performance was not. Exploratory analyses revealed that rumination mediates the association between depression and subjective cognitive complaints.

Cognitive problems are common in depression and affect the quality of life. The results suggest that patients with depression have higher levels of rumination and subjective memory impairment, and that there is no direct link between subjective and objective cognitive decline. The findings may have implications for the development of effective treatment strategies for depression and cognitive impairment.