A Validation Study of the German Autobiographical Memory Interview

Overview

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is recommended for the treatment of severe depression. But, despite the high remission rates the use of ECT is strongly limited by the social stigma and treatment-emergent cognitive side effects in patients. The most relevant is retrograde amnesia (RA), because it can persists for months and years. To measure RA after ECT the short-form of the Autobiographical Memory Interview (SF-AMI) is commonly used. However, the validation of the German SF-AMI has not yet been carried out. Thus, the aim of this study is to validate the German SF-AMI in depressed patient and healthy controls. The investigators hypothesize that the German SF-AMI is reliable and valid to quantify RA.

To measure retrograde amnesia of autobiographical memory after ECT, various tests were used so far. Currently, the short form of the Autobiographical Memory Interview (AMI-SF) was used most frequently internationally. In Germany there is no validated translation of the AMI-SF. However, in order to be able to systematically record the cognitive side effects of ECT in clinical practice as well as in research in the German-speaking area, it is important to have validated test procedures that can be successfully used in repeated measurements. In this study, the German version of the AMI (D-AMI), i.e. the specificity of the German short version of the autobiographical memory in patients with depression will be investigated. It is also known in healthy people that autobiographical memory contents can no longer be called up over time. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate whether a change in autobiographical memory over the course of time in depressed patients differs from healthy control subjects. It should also be shown whether this German short version for examining autobiographical memory (D-AMI) can be carried out.