Citation

Yoon S, Kim HS, Kim JI, Lee S, Lee SH. Psychiatry Clin. Neurosci. 2015; 70(3): 151-158.

Affiliation

Inje University, Ilsan-Paik Hospital, Goyang, Korea.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/pcn.12369

PMID

26522432

Abstract

AIM: Decoding facial expression is important for psychological well-being. This study examined facial emotion recognition of simple/complex and pleasant/unpleasant emotions in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and anxiety disorders (AnDs).

METHODS: MDD (n = 37), AnDs (n = 36) and healthy controls (HC) (n = 40) participated in this study. The recognition accuracy of emotional faces was calculated.

RESULTS: MDD had significantly lower recognition accuracy compared to HC. MDD exhibited lower recognition accuracy for simple emotions compared to AnDs and HC, and lower accuracy for complex emotions compared only to HC. AnDs and HC showed comparable recognition accuracy for simple emotions, which were lower than that of MDD. However, in recognition accuracy of complex emotions, AnDs was not significantly different from both MDD and HC.

CONCLUSIONS: MDD and AnDs have a distinctive difficulty at the recognition of facial expressions. The recognition of the complex emotions in MDD and AnDs should be studied further.

Language: en