Assessment of cognitive function in patients with stress-related exhaustion using the Cognitive Assessment Battery (CAB)

ABSTRACT

Introduction: The health care system is facing an increased number of patients seeking care for burnout/stress-related exhaustion. One of the core features of this condition is cognitive impairment—effective and easy tools are needed to assess cognition in this patient group. Our objective was to determine whether the Cognitive Assessment Battery (CAB) could be used for this purpose. Method: Ninety-three patients diagnosed with exhaustion disorder (ED) and 111 controls were included in the study and tested with CAB. CAB consists of six short tests covering the cognitive domains speed and attention, episodic memory, visuospatial, language, and executive functions. The patients also completed questionnaires on subjective memory problems, degree of burnout, anxiety, and depression. Results: The patients performed worse than the controls on four tests of speed and attention, language, and executive function. Subjective memory problems, degree of burnout, and anxiety did not influence cognitive performance, only degree of depression influenced performance negatively on an executive test. Conclusion: CAB is a useful instrument for rapid, comprehensive screening of cognitive status in patients with stress-related exhaustion. Using it, we confirmed the most replicated findings regarding cognitive impairments in patients with stress-related exhaustion.

KEYWORDS:

• Burnout
• cognition
• exhaustion
• neuropsychology
• stress

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Pfizer Sweden AB for distributing the test material.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.