PRIMARY OR DEPRESSIVE DEMENTIA - PSYCHOMETRIC ASSESSMENT

In the wake of Norman reforms, the Prerogativa Regis came to officiate in 13th-century Britain as a legal certification procedure to determine a person's fitness to carry on independently, manage one's patrimony or business, discharge familial duties and care, etc. In the process, distinctions had to be made between normal senescence, functional incapacitation (e.g., depressive disorder), or organic decline (e.g., degenerative disease) using, among others, simple tests designed to gauge orientation, mental calculation, and more complex functioning such as memory and social comprehension. Today, the number of tests applied to the same effect has grown immensely, though only a few are psychometrically documented with enough details to enable comparisons of their efficiency in individual testing. This article first examines some of the parameters that determine test validity in single case assessment. A number of measures currently used to differentiate between depressive and primary dementia are then briefly considered before describing alternative assessment strategies that could prove useful in devising newer tools to improve diagnostic specificity.