Executive Functioning in Depressed Patients With Suicidal Ideation

The authors hypothesized that compared with depressed subjects without suicide ideation, depressed individuals with suicide ideation would display poorer performance on measures of executive functioning that involve mental flexibility. 28 inpatients with a current major depressive episode who had no current suicide ideation were compared with 25 who had current suicide ideation on measures of executive functioning & 2 neurocognitive tests that predominantly assess non-frontal regions. Depressed, suicidal patients performed significantly worse on several measures of executive functioning after controlling for age, IQ, severity of depression, & prior suicide attempts. Depressed individuals contemplating suicide had cognitive rigidity which did not appear to be a global brain dysfunction. (47 refs.)