The interest of measuring recognising facial expressions in depressed patients with major depression disorder

Background. - Abnormal recognition of facial expressions (ARFE) is associated with poor inter-relational difficulties. Among depressive patients, the difficulties in recognising facial expressions lead to errors in emotionally charged information. Objectives. - To evaluate ARFE following the Analysis method and the search for emotional integration (MARIE). This tool uses a continuation of fictive portraits created from two real portraits and in varying proportions (Professor Eckman's portraits with his agreement). This is an emotional series, which can be either unipolar or bipolar (neutral/emotion, emotion/emotion). The subject has to choose between two possibilities for each portrait. The programme comprises nine series of 19 pictures of three different faces (a fair-haired woman, a dark-haired woman and a man). Statistical analysis. - An average between the two evaluations (chi(2) test) can be compared according to the patient's answers. Comparison of results between patient's answers before and after the treatment and results before and after of a standard reference, which is, by definition, 100%. Comparing the averages of time answering between the two evaluations (Student test) by logarithms. Results. - The joy would be the emotion most sensitive to improve the mood and thus therapy. Conversely, recognition of fear and surprise would be the less sensitive. There would be a gradient answer of qualitative (type of emotion) and quantitative (intensity score) over treatment. The patient hardly recognizes the sadness at the opposite of the anger. There would be a hypo-sensibility to sadness or hypersensitivity to anger in a major depression. However, the disorder varies according to the face presented. Discussion. - We report the results of a unique case and we must remain critical. However, the results are in the line with most writers. It credits the interest of the measurement tool. The graduation in the intensity of the scores does not suggest a single system but seven emotional subsystems separated which intensity of the response is proportional to the mood disorder. This work should be extended to a homogeneous population of patients with more tests faces to avoid the idiosyncrasie and to better study the interactions between emotions and mood. (C) 2010 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.