RESUMEN
Background: The central features of schizophrenia are cognitive impairments and are related to functional status and other aspects of the illness. Aim: The aim of the study was to compare the neurocognitive deficits in patients with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Materials and methods: 50 Schizophrenia patients and 50 Bipolar Disorder patients who were diagnosed as per ICD-10 attending the OPD of Santhiram Medical College and General Hospital, Nandyal were included in the study. Results: The current study measured phonemic fluency using controlled oral word association test, category fluency using animal names test and working memory using N-Back tests (verbal and visual) and the patients with BPAD performed better than schizophrenia patients. The pattern of similarity varied between the two groups in that more number of BPAD patients were able to tell words in the higher ranges and more number of schizophrenia patients were able to tell words in the lower ranges. On N-Back tests the patients with schizophrenia consistently performed poorer than bipolar disorder patients in the higher ranges of performance as shown by the results of both verbal and visual 1-back and 2-back tests hits and errors where the patients with bipolar disorder produced more hits and less errors than the patients with schizophrenia. The mean values showed that patients D. Ravi Kiran, N. Kavitha Prassana, A. Sreelakshmi Latha, C. Gowtham Reddy. Comparative study of neurocognitive deficits in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. IAIM, 2019; 6(3): 291-299. Page 292 with bipolar disorder produced more hits and less errors than the patients with schizophrenia. On the domain of executive functions, BPAD patients were performing better than schizophrenia patients on all tests with statistically significant differences on N-back tests and statistically no significant differences on Controlled oral word association and Animal names tests. Conclusion: The pattern of non-significant differences between the two disorders followed a trend, which suggests that patients with BPAD were performing better than those with schizophrenia.