Bipolar Disorder / Cognitive tests predict employability

Patients with bipolar disorder who are not employed despite being in euthymia have poorer neurocognition than those who are in a job, report researchers.

“The current findings add to the few studies indicating that cognitive dysfunction may negatively impact the specific area of employment,” says the team from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, USA, led by Kelly Ryan.

They found that 33 unemployed bipolar disorder patients performed worse than 123 employed patients in tasks related to emotion processing, verbal fluency and processing speed, and processing speed with interference resolution.

“Treatment for [bipolar disorder] generally focuses on clinical remission, but our results indicate that treatments should target areas of cognitive functioning as contributing factors to improve overall functional recovery, such as employability,” Ryan et al write in Psychiatry Research.

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via medwireNews – Psychiatry – Cognitive tests predict employability in bipolar disorder.