Year: 2017
Type: conference-abstract
Abstract: Background: Studies of individuals with chronic depression suggest that depressive symptoms are associated with emotion recognition (ER) impairments (Auerbach et al., 2015). Although ER deficits in people with schizophrenia (SCZ) are well established (Kohler et al., 2009), little is known about the relationship between depressive symptoms and ER in SCZ. Aims of the current study were to examine whether higher depressive symptoms relate to (1) worse ER performance and (2) attributing negative emotions to neutral faces (ie, a negative bias) in SCZ. Methods: Patients (n = 219) were first divided into “depressed” or “nondepressed” groups based on BDI scores, and performance on the ER-40 was compared between groups. Those scoring 0–13 points were classified as “nondepressed” (n = 110), and those scoring 20 or greater were classified as “depressed” (n = 69). To extend the findings to clinician-rated depression, similar procedures were then followed when parsing the sample using the PANSS. A 1 or 2 on the G6 Depression Item classified a patient as “nondepressed” (n = 101) while those scoring a 4 or greater were classified as “depressed” (n = 71). This procedure, meant to focus analyses on only those with minimal vs more severe depressive symptoms, excluded 40 participants on the BDI and 47 on the PANSS. Results: A repeated-measures ANOVA showed that BDI groups did not differ on overall ER accuracy, but there was a significant group*emotion interaction (P = .034). Follow-up analyses via independent-samples t tests suggested that this interaction was driven solely by fear recognition. Depressed SCZ were better at recognizing fearful faces than nondepressed SCZ (P = .003, d = 0.44). Although the group*emotion interaction did not reach significance when using PANSS scores (P = .147), the advantage for depressed individuals on fear remained (P = .012, d = 0.40). Error pattern analyses showed that depressive symptoms did not relate to a negative bias: incorrect attribution of fear, anger, and sadness to neutral faces did not differ between groups on the BDI (P ≥ .233) or PANSS (P ≥ .074). Conclusion: Overall, our results suggest that depressive symptoms are related to fear recognition in SCZ. Given the co-occurrence of anxious and depressive symptoms, this may highlight the importance of mood congruency in fear recognition. While depressive symptoms had minimal effect on the recognition of other emotions, our sample consisted of outpatients with relatively mild levels of depression that may have limited our ability to detect more subtle effects. In addition, we evaluated current depressive symptoms, and perhaps emotion recognition is only negatively affected by chronic depression. Future work should further examine the potential role of symptomatology and mood congruency in ER in individuals with SCZ.
Source: Schizophrenia Bulletin
Language: English
Subfield: Psychiatry and Mental health
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2598437839