Dynamics of Voluntary Verbal Memory Indicators of Children and Adolescents with Endogenous Mental Pathology During Treatment

Background: to assess the effectiveness of therapeutic, psychotherapeutic, and psycho-correctional procedures the study of cognitive functions (memory) is necessary. There are few studies of treatment effectiveness through analysis of the dynamics of voluntary memory indicators in children and adolescents with schizophrenia.

Purpose: to analyze the dynamics of voluntary verbal memory indicators in children and adolescents with endogenous mental pathology during treatment in the short-term and medium-term.

Subjects and methods: clinical groups included 134 patients 7–17 years old with diagnoses of childhood type schizophrenia (F20.8xx3), schizotypal personality disorder (F21), undifferentiated schizophrenia (F20.3). The healthy control group for the assessment of short-term and medium-term dynamics included 64 pupils of secondary schools in Moscow, aged 10–16 years.

Methods: Learning of 10 Words, Paired Associations, the Digit Span subtest from WISC. All subjects were examined twice.

Results: therapeutic dynamics shows that the deficit level of immediate memorization volume and memorization effectiveness did not change in 55% and 65% of patients, respectively. Improvement (approaching the norm) of immediate memorization and memorization effectiveness was demonstrated by 26% and 21% of patients, respectively. Statistically significant changes in the state of associative memory during therapy were noted in the groups F21 and F20.3. The effect of specific drugs (neuroleptics,
nootropics, antidepressants) on memory in a separate sample of 36 patients showed a tendency for the positive effect of nootropics and antidepressants. In the medium-term (age-related) dynamics, patients in F21 and F20.3 groups demonstrated relative stability of memory indicators; a tendency towards positive dynamics was found in the F21 group.

Conclusions: a tendency to multidirectional therapeutic dynamics of immediate memory indices was revealed depending on the diagnosis, variability of indices during re-examination in connection with treatment with individual drugs. The dynamics of memory indices in the mediumterm reveals the differences associated with the diagnosis — a minimum of positive age-related shifts in the F20.8xx3 group and variants of dynamics that are close to normal in the F21 and F20.3 groups. The “learning effect” found in the developmental norm is not so noticeable or not noticeable at all in clinical groups.

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