poster presentation

1. Introduction
Executive Functions In Students With Depression ,Anxiety and Stress symptoms
Bita Ajilchi ,Vahid Nejati
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Science and Research branch, Islamic azad University , Tehran , Iran.
Department of Psychology , Faculty of Education and Psychology , Shahid Beheshti University , Tehran, Iran.
Bushra Faryal (SP19-RBM-020)
Depression is a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way
you think and how u act.
 Depression causes feelings of sadness and loss of interest in activities.
Anxiety is your body’s natural response to stress.
 It’s a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome.
Executive functions are a set of cognitive processes that are necessary for cognitive control of
behavior.
Executive functions include basic cognitive processes such as attentional control cognitive
inhibition, working memory.
 This study aimed to investigate & compare the executive functions of students with depression ,
anxiety & stress symptoms with those functions in healthy ones.
Methodology
This study was a comparative cross-sectional & non-clinical study.
The study population comprised all students of Shahid Behesti University, Tehran, Iran, 448
students (both males & females) were selected.
Total no. of
students 448
30 = males
92 = females
50= healthy
participants
30 depressed
participants
27 Anxiety
participants
15 stress
participants
Stroop test
Multivariate ANOVA & Tukey post hoc
test were used.
DASS was used to measuring the intensity of depression,
anxiety and stress symptoms
Questionnaires include demographics
Wisconsin card sorting test.
References
 Smitheman, T. A., Huerkamp, J. K., Miller,B. I., Houle, T. T.,& O`jile, J. R. (2007). The relation
of depression and anxiety to measures of executive functioning in a mixed psychiatric sample.
Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 22(5), 647–54.
 Silverstein, M. L., Mavrolefteros, G., & Turnbull, A. (2003). Premorbid factors in relation to
motor, memory, and executive functions deficits in adult schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research,
61(2-3), 271–80.
 Otte, C., Wingenfeld, K., Kuehl, L. K., Kaczmarczyk, M., Richter,S., Quante, A., et al. (2014).
Mineralocorticoid receptor stimulation improves cognitive function and decreases cortisol
secretion in depressed patients and healthy individu-als. Neuropsychopharmacology, 40(2), 386–
93.
Results
Table 1. Demographic characteristics
Table 2. MANOVA to compare the selective attention functions (Stroop Test) among the groups.
Table 3. MANOVA to compare the shifting attention (Wisconsin Test) in groups.
Table 4. MANOVA to compare the cognitive abilities test among groups.
Table 5. Tukey Test to study differences between groups.
Future Prospectives
Conclusion
 They conclude that no significant difference exist among groups with regard to selective &
shifting attention. Cognitive abilities & decision making of healthy group were better than all
other groups. Sustained attention of healthy people was only better than that of anxiety
individuals.
 The study is only limited to Iranian population in future this should also done on other Asian
students population.
 The sample size is low should be increase for further studies.
 In future this type of studies helps in understanding students social behavior.