Do depressed patients really over-report cognitive impairment?

Depressed patients report more severe cognitive impairment than is detectable by neuropsychological tests because they may underestimate their cognitive performance. Alternatively, it is possible that cognitive impairment primarily occurs under everyday life conditions as referred to in most questionnaires. The aim of the present study is to investigate the validity of self-reports in patients with major depression in order to better understand the pronounced impairment in self-reports.

We investigated 58 patients with major depression and 28 heathy control participants. We administered the "Screen for Cognitive Impairment in Psychiatry" (SCIP) to assess cognitive performance, the "Questionnaire for Cognitive Complaints" (FLei), and the newly developed scale for "Self-Perception of Cognitive Performance in everyday life and test settings" to ask for the self-assessed cognitive performance in everyday life and in a test situation more specifically.

Depressed patients showed an inferior test performance and reported much more general everyday life related cognitive problems compared to healthy participants. When asked more specifically for their cognitive performance in the test-situation compared to others and compared to everyday life, they did not report more test-related and everyday life related impairment than healthy participants did.

Results might be influenced by comorbidity.

These results have implications for the assessment of subjective cognitive performance of depressed patients and shed light on the negative effects of general versus more specific recall of autobiographical information.