The Clock Drawing Test as a measure of executive dysfunction in elderly depressed patients

The aims of this research were to determine whether performance on the Clock Drawing Test (CDT) could accurately distinguish between older patients with depression and older patients with depression and previously undocumented executive dysfunction and to determine if there was a correlation between CDT and depression severity. The authors studied 52 patients consecutively admitted to a geriatric psychiatry inpatient unit of a university hospital who met DSM-IV criteria for major depression or depression not otherwise specified but had no concurrent diagnosis of dementia. All the subjects completed the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Mattis Dementia Rating Scale (DRS), and the CDT, as well as the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). The patients were divided into 2 subgroups based on the DRS score: <129 (cognitive impairment) versus greater than or equal to129. Results indicated that the depressed patients with a score of DRS <129 had significantly lower CDT scores than did patients with DRS greater than or equal to129 and normal comparison subjects (P <.01). The results support the hypothesis that CDT score is lower in elderly depressed patients with executive dysfunction versus nondepressed seniors as well as depressed patients without executive dysfunction.