Evaluation of relationship between executive function of brain and mental health in older adults

The aim of this study was to determine The relationship between mental health and cognitive function of frontal lobe.
In these cross sectional study we used General Health Questioner (GHQ 28) and test for evaluation of executive function of frontal lobe (Trail Making Test, Verbal Fluency Test and Digit Span Test) for evaluation of mental health and executive function of 150 older adults that participated. in this study. We use Spearman’s correlation coefficient for evaluation of relationship between mental health criteria and executive functioning.
Results showed that there were significant correlation between digit span performance and depression, anxiety and physical pain (P value respectively 0.004, 0.039 and 0.007). Also there were significant correlation between verbal fluency performance and depression and anxiety (P value respectively 0.006 and 0.001). Finally there were significant correlation between trail making performance and anxiety (P 0.014).
Moreauer it was found that depression , anxiety and executive function of frontal lobe was refered to age related cognitive decline of frontal lobe. cortical- striatal- pallidal- thalamus- cortical pathway mediating both cognitive executive function and depression, anxiety and aging causes dysfunction in this pathway. Practical use of this study and future interventional study can be helpful for therapeutic use of cognitive rehabilitation in treatment of geriatrics depression.