Over-reporting: The role of depression in subjective cognitive complaints

Abstract

Subjective cognitive complaints are common in various medical illnesses, in which patients report difficulties performing cognitive tasks. However, neuropsychological evaluations of patients with cognitive complaints often yield scores consistent with population norms, thus indicating that subjective complaints are not necessarily associated with objective cognitive impairment. Research on cognitive complaints reveals that complaints are highly predicted by depressive symptoms and the relationship between complaints and neuropsychological impairment is variable. The objective of this paper is to explore the phenomenon of the subjective complaints in the absence of objective impairment (termed “over-reporting”), extrapolate from research on cognitive complaints in clinical illness and major depression, and subsequently propose a model of the mechanism of over-reporting based on cognitive-behavioral theories of depression.