Do Socio-Demographic Variables Impact Executive Functions in the Unaffected Relatives of Adolescent Patients with Mood Disorders?

This paper attempts to determine whether sociodemographic variables like residence, socioeconomic status, education, occupation and so on, have an impact on measures of executive functioning in the first degree relatives of those with Bipolar Disorder. 30 unaffected first degree relatives of patients with Bipolar Disorder of both sexes, between the ages of 14 and 50 years were selected. Executive functioning was assessed using the BADS battery which consisted of the Rule Shift Cards (RS), Action Programme (AP), Key Search (KS), Temporal Judgement (TJ), Zoo Map (ZM), Modified Six Elements (MSET); and the Dysexecutive Questionnaire (DEX). Data was analysed using descriptive statistics, Point Biserial and Pearson correlation. Results showed that age, education and residence did have an impact on certain subtests of this battery. While Age was positively related to TJTotal profile scores, Education was positively correlated with MSET Total profile scores and Residence was directly related to Total profile scores of Key Search subtest.