Differential Diagnosis of Primary Affective Depression Using the Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery

Abstract

This study examined the utility of the Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery as a discriminator of primary affective depression when compared with normals and a group of mixed psychiatric patients. Orthogonal contrasts between groups showed superior performance for normals on most Halstead-Reitan subtests. Contrasts between pathological groups showed that these groups differed only on subtests associated with left hemispheric functioning, with the mixed psychiatric patients performing more poorly than the depressives. A step-wise discriminant analysis indicated that on the basis of neuropsychological variables alone, affective depressives were differentiated from normals and mixed psychiatric patients with clinical levels of accuracy. The results were discussed in terms of their implications for diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of primary affective depression.

Key Words:

• affective depression
• neuropsychology
• cerebral hemisphere differences