Relationships between global functioning and neuropsychological predictors in subjects at high risk of psychosis or with a recent onset of depression

Objective: Psychotic disorders are frequently associated with decline in functioning and cognitive difficulties are observed in subjects at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis. In this work, we applied automatic approaches to neurocognitive and functioning measures, with the aim of investigating the link between global, social and occupational functioning, and cognition.

Methods: 102 CHR subjects and 110 patients with recent onset depression (ROD) were recruited. Global assessment of functioning (GAF) related to symptoms (GAF-S) and disability (GAF-D). and global functioning social (GF-S) and role (GF-R), at baseline and of the previous month and year, and a set of neurocognitive measures, were used for classification and regression.

Results: Neurocognitive measures related to GF-R at baseline (r = 0.20, p = 0.004), GF-S at present (r = 0.14, p = 0.042) and of the past year (r = 0.19, p = 0.005), for GAF-F of the past month (r = 0.24, p < 0.001) and GAF-D of the past year (r = 0.28, p = 0.002). Classification reached values of balanced accuracy of 61% for GF-R and GAF–D.

Conclusion: We found that neurocognition was related to psychosocial functioning. More specifically, a deficit in executive functions was associated to poor social and occupational functioning.