If you've been feeling more forgetful lately, it could be connected to your depression. Research suggests that depression can affect many aspects of cognition — including your working memory, long-term memory, and memory about yourself (aka autobiographical memory).
Depressed individuals typically show poor memory for positive events, potentiated memory for negative events, and impaired recollection. These phenomena are clinically important but poorly understood.
It comes as no surprise that depression and anxiety make you feel sad, bad, and stressed. But many people are unaware that these mental health issues are also associated with forgetfulness, poor concentration, trouble making decisions, and confusion. It all adds up to memory problems, and that's bad news.
Depressive cognitive disorders, also called pseudodementia (a term founded by Kiloh in the year 1961), is defined as the cognitive and functional impairment imitating neurodegenerative disorders caused secondary to neuropsychiatric symptoms.
Health care providers often use a brief test such as the Short Test of Mental Status, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) or the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). More detailed testing may help determine the degree memory is impaired.
The main sign of mild cognitive impairment is a slight decline in mental abilities. Examples include: Memory loss: You may forget recent events or repeat the same questions and stories. You may occasionally forget the names of friends and family members or forget appointments or planned events.
The symptoms of depression are often mistaken for dementia. It is not easy to define the symptoms because many people with dementia develop signs of depression, such as feelings of low self-esteem and confidence, tearfulness and appetite, concentration and memory problems.
Sometimes, memory loss occurs with mental health problems, such as: After a major, traumatic or stressful event. Bipolar disorder. Depression or other mental health disorders, such as schizophrenia.
Causes of brain fog
Some studies show that depression can reduce cognitive functions, including our working memory, long-term memory, and ability to focus. When we're forgetful or having trouble making decisions, we're more likely to suffer from that feeling of brain fog.
Memory and other thinking problems have many possible causes, including depression, an infection, or medication side effects. Sometimes, the problem can be treated, and cognition improves. Other times, the problem is a brain disorder, such as Alzheimer's disease, which cannot be reversed.
Depression affects more than just emotion and mood. It can also change the way your brain functions. The potential cognitive changes from depression include executive dysfunction, impaired learning and memory, reduced attention and concentration, and lower processing speed. Treatment is available to help.
Tranquilizers, antidepressants, some blood pressure drugs, and other medications can affect memory, usually by causing sedation or confusion. That can make it difficult to pay close attention to new things. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist if you suspect that a new medication is taking the edge off your memory.
Common causes
Lyndsay shared some: Depression, anxiety and stress – “These are common causes of forgetfulness,” Lyndsay said. “Stress and mood disturbances can act as a distraction and make it difficult to focus, which can lead to memory problems.”
Memory loss is a common anxiety symptom. This is for many reasons, from the neurochemical (cortisol) to the fact that if your brain is busy worrying that means it's not busy remembering. Sleep deprivation and panic attacks are anxiety symptoms that make anxiety memory loss much worse.
The Mini-Cog test.
A third test, known as the Mini-Cog, takes 2 to 4 minutes to administer and involves asking patients to recall three words after drawing a picture of a clock. If a patient shows no difficulties recalling the words, it is inferred that he or she does not have dementia.
Introduction: The five-word test (5WT) is a serial verbal memory test with semantic cuing. It is proposed to rapidly evaluate memory of aging people and has previously shown its sensitivity and its specificity in identifying patients with AD.
No matter what your age, several underlying causes can bring about memory problems. Forgetfulness can arise from stress, depression, lack of sleep or thyroid problems. Other causes include side effects from certain medicines, an unhealthy diet or not having enough fluids in your body (dehydration).
Pseudodementia (fake dementia or fake cognitive decline) occurs when a person is so slowed down from depression or another psychiatric illness that they present as intellectually or cognitively impaired.
Mood-related conditions such as depression are some potential causes of pseudodementia. Although a number of causes may lead to pseudodementia, depression may be the most common.
The five-minute cognitive test (FCT) was designed to capture deficits in five domains of cognitive abilities, including episodic memory, language fluency, time orientation, visuospatial function, and executive function.
The Self-Administered Gerocognitive Exam, known as SAGE, is a brief, pen-and-paper cognitive assessment tool designed to detect the early signs of cognitive, memory, or thinking impairments. The test evaluates your thinking abilities. This can help your doctors understand how well your brain is functioning.
Patient assessment tools:
The GPCOG is a screening tool for cognitive impairment designed for use in primary care and is available in multiple languages. Mini-Cog - The Mini-Cog is a 3-minute test consisting of a recall test for memory and a scored clock-drawing test.