Form of depression and frontal executive functions disorder in the elderly

Abstract

Depression is one of the psychic disorders most found in the elderly, because of health problems, fear of loneliness and death, especially when there are more or less severe cognitive impairments, either because of brain aging or because of depression itself, as several studies have shown the relationship between depression in the elderly and executive function disorders as an index of frontal disorders . We are aiming through this study to show the existing relationship between the form of depression according to Rufin and Ferreri in 1984, these forms are: melancholia depression, anxiety-impulsive form, anxiety-depressive form, asthenic form, anxiety and slowed form, the anxiety-somatic form, the depresso-inhibited form, and the altered executive function as mentioned in the Frontal assessment battery (FAB) Sixty five elderly subjects living at home or in nursing homes were included, they were evaluated at the thymic level through the HARD diagram for the form of depression (Rufin and Ferreri 1984) translated and validated in Arabic by the two researchers, as well as on the cognitive level by the frontal assessment battery (Dubois 2000) translated into Arabic by Taleb Hanane in 2017, the designed battery consists of six subtests exploring the following: conceptualization, mental flexibility, motor programing, se After scoring the tests applied in this study we found that depression promotes disorders of executive functions and prefrontal disorders, and even that the form of depression determines impaired executive function