The effect of sertraline on cognitive, psychomotor and personality-behavioural parameters in therapy of depression (clinical case)

The article presents a clinical case of the use of the antidepressant sertraline at a dose of 100 mg in a patient with a primary moderate depressive episode. At the time of treatment, the condition lasted 16 months, and symptomatology of anxiousapathic depression of endoreactive type was observed. Positive therapeutic dynamics were observed in the course of therapy with achieving clinical remission by the end of the 6th week of treatment. The reduction of anxiodepressive symptomatology was accompanied by positive dynamics of psychomotor indices with normalization of balance of excitation and inhibition processes, cognitive indices with improvement of executive functions in the form of increase of polyindependence, functional mobility of nervous processes and stress resistance, increase of productivity and stability of attention, operative memory. Significant positive changes were observed in the analysis of formal-dynamic personal characteristics: the level of psychomotor and intellectual emotionality decreased, which reflects a decrease in the intensity of emotional experience of the divergence between the expected and real results of activity, the levels of intellectual plasticity reflecting the flexibility of thinking, intellectual and communicative speed, i.e. the speed of mental processes, speech activity and verbalization increased. In the personal- emotional sphere there was an increase in frustration tolerance, balance of extrapunitive, intrapunitive and impulsive directions of reactions, increase in frequency of «obstacle-fixed» type of reaction and decrease in frequency of «self-protection» type of reaction, decrease in aggressiveness index. At the same time there were no changes in «behavioural activity types» technique: the expressed behavioural pattern of «A» type of so-called «stress-coronary» behaviour was preserved. The revealed changes indicate an increase in the adaptive capacity of the individual against the background of remitative antidepressive pharmacotherapy with sertraline.

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