Computerized neurocognitive testing and its potential for modern psychiatry.

PSYCHIATRISTS SHOULD REVISIT THE ISSUE OF HOW TO ASSESS, OBJECTIVELY AND reliably, patients' cognitive status. Cognitive disorders, like ADHD (attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder), and the various dementias are increasing in importance, and perhaps in number. The modern study of schizophrenia has focused on cognition as an outcome predictor; even the mood disorders can be associated, over time, with cognitive impairment. And with so many perfectly good drug alternatives in every therapeutic category, medications might be differentiated by virtue of their comparative effects on cognition. The best reason, however, is this: in clinical practice, cognitive assessment is either gross and insensitive or arduous and inordinately expensive.