Citation

Moreira L, Neves FS, Schlottfeldt CG, Abrantes SSC, de Moraes PHP, Romano-Silva MA, Correa H, Malloy-Diniz LF. Clin. Neuropsychiatry 2010; 7(3): 116-120.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Giovanni Fioriti Editore)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Recent studies point out to the existence of neuropsychological deficits in patients with bipolar disorder even in euthymic periods. Episodic memory deficits are frequently described in patients with bipolar disorder (BD). This study aims to evaluate the performance of patients with BD compared with health controls on tests of verbal and visual episodic memory. We further considered the bipolar subtype, lifetime history of psychotic symptoms and suicide attempts.

METHOD: Sixty euthymic BD patients and sixty normal individuals with same age and scolarship were involved in the study. All subjects were submitted to the MINI Neuropsychiatric interview, Raven's Progressive Matrices, Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test and Rey Complex Figure Test.

RESULTS: Regardless the absence of intelligence differences between BD and Control subjects, the former are impaired in both verbal and visual memory measures. Comparing groups according BD subtype, we found that visual memory presents worse results in Type I patients than in Type II. No differences were found considering history of psychotic symptoms and suicide attempts.

CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggests that episodic memory impairments is important in euthymic bipolar patients and not influenced by the subtype and history of psychotic symptoms, and suicide attempts. © 2010 Giovanni Fioriti Editore s.r.l.

Language: en

Keywords

adult; human; Suicide; female; male; Episodic memory; bipolar disorder; Bipolar disorder; Psychosis; psychosis; suicide attempt; suicidal behavior; article; major clinical study; mental disease; controlled study; intelligence; mental patient; neurologic disease; bipolar I disorder; bipolar II disorder; symptom; Neuropsychology; memory disorder; visual memory; verbal memory; episodic memory