Elsevier

Comprehensive Psychiatry

Volume 52, Issue 5, September–October 2011, Pages 498-506
Comprehensive Psychiatry

Cognition and nondysphoric depression among adoptees at high risk for psychopathology

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comppsych.2010.10.007Get rights and content

Abstract

Background

Association between poor cognition and symptom clusters including depressive ideation (eg, guilt) and vegetative symptoms in the absence of dysphoria (nondysphoric depression [NDD]) has been suggested in the elderly. The current study examined associations between NDD and premorbid and concurrent cognitive functioning in younger adults at high risk for psychopathology. Nondysphoric depression and depressed subjects were expected to show poorer premorbid and current cognition than nondepressed participants.

Method

Subjects were adoptees enrolled in the Iowa Adoption Study [Yates W, Cadoret R, Troughton E. The Iowa adoption studies: methods and results. On the way to individuality: methodological issues in behavioral genetics. In: LaBuda M, Grigorenko E, (Eds), Editor. 1999, Commack (NY): Nova Science Publishers, Inc. p. 95-121]. Nondysphoric depression subjects were compared with nondepressed comparison subjects and with subjects with dysphoric depression (DD) on measures of premorbid cognition (estimated by standardized school achievement test scores) and concurrent cognition (intelligence, attention, memory, and executive abilities).

Results

Nondysphoric depression and DD showed lower premorbid cognition and executive functioning, whereas DD showed lower verbal and performance IQ compared to nondepressed subjects. The size of the comparison between NDD and nondepressed subjects for premorbid cognition was double that between DD and nondepressed subjects. No significant differences in cognition were found between NDD and DD. These effects were no longer significant after controlling for premorbid cognition.

Conclusions

Poorer premorbid cognition and executive functions in NDD (and the absence of current cognitive differences compared with DD) suggest that NDD may be a condition of clinical interest. Because poor cognition is a known correlate of alexithymia, these results (including their magnitude) are consistent with the view that NDD may be a paradoxical presentation of depression in persons with limited ability to be aware and to verbally-report emotions.

Section snippets

Subjects

The subjects in the present study were selected from a parent sample of 330 volunteer adoptees interviewed during years 2004 to 2008 in the context of a study examining the effects of substance use diagnoses on cognition [27], [28], [29]. At initial recruitment, half of the sample had birth parent(s) identified as having substance abuse problems and/or antisocial behaviors, and neither of the birth parents had problems for the other half of the sample. During the current follow-up, one third of

Sample description

Twenty subjects with NDD, 89 with DD, and 109 nondepressed comparisons were identified. Frequencies of DSM-IV depressive symptoms by group are shown in Table 1. The most common symptoms among subjects with NDD were worthlessness or guilt (95%), change in sleep patterns (80%), and fatigue (65%). Demographic variables are shown in Table 2. Analysis of variance showed no significant differences between groups for current age (F2,n = 223 = 2.0; P = .138) and years of education (F2,n = 223 = 2.0; P

Discussion

The present study examined associations between dysphoric (DD) and nondysphoric (NDD) depression with premorbid and concurrent cognitive abilities in a sample of adult adoptees from the Iowa Adoption Study [22]. Nondysphoric depression is a subsyndromal (ie, not meeting DSM-IV criteria for major depression or other unipolar conditions) depressive condition [12], [21] that has been posited to be a phenomenological variant of depression in individuals with limited capacity to perceive and express

Acknowledgment

The authors have no conflict of interest to disclose, which is relevant to the content of this article. Dr Paradiso was supported by the Edward J. Mallinckrodt Jr. Foundation, the Dana Foundation, and an National Institutes of Health Career development award (5K23AG027837). Dr Tranel was supported, in part, by Program Project Grant NINDS NS19632 and NIDA DA022549. Dr Caspers and data collection was supported by a National Institutes of Health grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (RO1

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