Abstract

Objectives: This study compared some cognitive activities of two groups of patients: those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and those suffering from anxiety and depression.

Method: 20 patients in each group were studied through semi-structured interviews, cognitive tests of learning, visual and verbal pairs associations, digit span, word fluency, learning digit, and Verbal Intelligence Scale. The results were analyzed through a multi- variate MANOVA.

Findings: The findings demonstrated that the two groups were significantly different in terms of cognitive performance. The multi-variate analysis showed that the performance of the patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder was significantly less satisfactory than the depressive anxious patients on tests of word fluency, learning visual pairs associations, delayed learning and learning verbal pairs associations.

Results: The patients with post-traumatic stress disorder suffer from disabilities in expression, verbal and visual memories, which might be the result of soft  brain abnormalities particularly in the hypocompus in the left hemisphere caused by an accident this can seriously affect their social and individual life.