Memory Functioning and Antidepressant Treatment

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a serious illness associated with considerable morbidity, risk of suicide and adverse social consequences (Montgomery et al., 1994a). Cognitive impairment is one of the three major symptom areas of MDD. Specifically, memory impairment and concerns are one of the most commonly reported complaints in MDD. While antidepressant (AD) treatments vary a great deal in their propensity to cause cognitive impairment, there remains a paucity of empirical evidence on the effects of AD treatment on neuropsychological indices of memory functioning in non-geriatric depressed individuals. Hence, comparative effects of various AD drugs on memory functioning remain unclear.The aim of this study is to evaluate multiple aspects of memory functioning (short-term, working memory, verbal, non-verbal, spatial and prospective memory) of MDD patients before and after 8 weeks of antidepressant treatment with bupropion XL or escitalopram.