El efecto aditivo en el diagnóstico dual: una revisión del funcionamiento cognitivo de pacientes con depresión mayor y alcoholismo

The comorbidity between major depressive disorder (MDD) and alcohol dependence (AD) is known as dual diagnosis (DD). It has been suggested that patients with this comorbidity display a more severe autonomic and mood symptoms compared to patients with a single diagnosis. However, the additive effect of cognitive deficits in this population has hardly been studied. The objective of this study was to present a summary of the current information on neurocognitive alterations in patients with DD (MDD-AD). The search was conducted using ScienceDirect and PubMed with the keywords: dual diagnosis; depression; alcoholism; cognitive functioning; neuropsychological performance; cognitive impairment; cognitive impairment and neuropsychology. The findings of the studies reported in this paper suggest that patients with DD show impairment in specific cognitive domains; and that their deficits do not seem to show an additive effect of two separate disorders.