Effect of depression on neuropsychological functioning in head injury: measurable but minimal

The goals of the study were to determine how neuropsychological functioning is related to depressive status in persons with head injury, and to quanti fy this relationship from a clinically relevant standpoint. participants we re 175 adults involved in litigation, referred for evaluation of suspected head injury. Depression status was measured using the Depression Content (D ep) scale of the MMPI-2. Depression status was related to measures of visua l attention and psychomotor skills, but not to other neuropsychological dom ains such as verbal ability, visual-spatial reasoning; or encoding/organiza tion. However, differences between low Dep and high Dep groups were minimal from a clinical standpoint. Depression appeared to contribute to an increa sed risk of impaired neuropsychological performance across domains, but onl y in persons not severely compromised by neuropsychological deficits. Overa ll, the results indicated a small effect of depression on neuropsychologica l functioning that is likely only detectable in persons whose neuropsycholo gical compromise is relatively minimal.