Utility of Bender-Gestalt Test-II for Differential Diagnosis of Major Depressive Patients, Brain Damaged and Normal Subjects

Forough Al-Sadat Bozorgpour, Changiz Rahimi, Norolah Mohamadi
unpublished
The current study was performed with the aim of investigating the diagnostic utility of Bender-Gestalt Test-II (BDT-II) in two groups of patients with major depression and brain-damage, while comparing them with normal individuals. The study was a causal-comparative research. Method: Major depressive patients (n=30), brain-damaged patients (n=30) and normal subjects (n=30) were compared using BDT-II in copying, recall, motor, and perceptual phases. Data was analyzed via one-way analysis of
more » ... nce and Kruskal-Wallis test approaches. The patients with depression and also brain-damaged patients were not significantly different in the phases under study; however, the normal individuals had significantly better performances than the patients in all the three phases. Results: The results indicated that BGT-II could differentiate the patients groups from normal subjects, although its differential diagnostic power between the patient groups was weak. In addition, it was found that, among the four subscales of BGT-II, recall, motor and perceptual phases had the highest power, while the copying subscale had the lowest power in differentiating different groups. Conclusion: This test is not able to rule out organic brain pathology from psychiatric patients, but it could differentiate brain damaged and psychiatric patients with severe symptoms from normal subjects.
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