Facial emotion recognition in psychiatrists and influences of their therapeutic identification on that ability.

OBJECTIVES: Although emotional cues like facial emotion expressions seem to be important in social interaction, there is no specific training about emotional cues for psychiatrists. Here, we aimed to investigate psychiatrists' ability of facial emotion recognition and relation with their clinical identification as psychotherapy-psychopharmacology oriented or being adult and childhood-adolescent psychiatrist. METHODS: Facial Emotion Recognition Test was performed to 130 psychiatrists that were constructed by a set of photographs (happy, sad, fearful, angry, surprised, disgusted and neutral faces) from Ekman and Friesen's. RESULTS: Psychotherapy oriented adult psychiatrists were significantly better in recognizing sad facial emotion (p=.003) than psychopharmacologists while no significant differences were detected according to therapeutic orientation among child-adolescent psychiatrists (for each, p>.05). Adult psychiatrists were significantly better in recognizing fearful (p=.012) and disgusted (p=.003) facial emotions than child-adolescent psychiatrists while the latter were better in recognizing angry facial emotion (p=.008). CONCLUSION: For the first time, we have shown some differences on psychiatrists' facial emotion recognition ability according to therapeutic identification and being adult or child-adolescent psychiatrist. It would be valuable to investigate how these differences or training the ability of facial emotion recognition would affect the quality of patient-clinician interaction and treatment related outcomes.

The Influences of Whole Brain Radiotherapy on Social Cognition and Association with Hippocampal and Frontal Dosimetry.

The influence of brain radiotherapy on neurocognition is a major concern. Social cognition is a mental process in the meaning of social interaction and the recognition of facial emotion is a domain of social cognition. Thus, we aimed to investigate the early effect of whole brain radiotherapy on facial emotion recognition ability. Thirteen patients with various brain tumors in the study. Beck depression and anxiety inventory and the facial emotion recognition test by using a set of photographs were performed at the beginning and post radiotherapy. The severity of depression (16.40 ± 12.16 vs 04.00 ± 02.38 points) and anxiety (14.47 ± 11.96 vs 04.54 ± 03.30 points) were significantly higher in patients. The only significance according to facial emotion recognition rate between initial phase of patients and healthy controls was identifying neutral facial em otion (p = 0.002). The patients after brain radiotherapy had significantly better rate of recognizing fear facial emotions (p = 0.039). This study is the first that investigated the effects of cranial irradiation on facial emotion recognition ability and compares this ability with healthy controls. Interestingly, in the early phase the patients seem to be improved in fear facial emotion after brain radiotherapy without sparing cognition specific regions as hippocampus and frontal regions.

Facial emotion recognition in male antisocial personality disorders with or without adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

OBJECTIVE: We aimed to investigate facial emotion recognition abilities in violent individuals with antisocial personality disorder who have comorbid attention deficient hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or not. METHOD: The photos of happy, surprised, fearful, sad, angry, disgust, and neutral facial expressions and Wender Utah Rating Scale have been performed in all groups. RESULTS: The mean ages were as follows: in antisocial personality disorder with ADHD 22.0 ± 1.59, in pure antisocial individuals 21.90 ± 1.80 and in controls 22.97 ± 2.85 (p>0.05). The mean score in Wender Utah Rating Scale was significantly different between groups (p<0.001). The mean accurate responses to each facial emotion between groups were insignificant (p>0.05) excluding disgust faces which was significantly impaired in ASPD+ADHD and pure ASPD groups. Antisocial individuals with attention deficient and hyperactivity had spent significantly more time to each facial emotion than healthy controls (p<0.05) while pure antisocial individual had more time to recognize disgust and neutral faces than healthy controls (p<0.05). CONCLUSION: Study of complex social cognitive abilities in adults with ADHD and violent behaviors is lacking. This study is the first, investigating the differences according to social cognition cues in violent individual that revealed no significance within pure antisocial individuals and antisocial individuals with ADHD.

Psychopathy and facial emotion recognition ability in patients with bipolar affective disorder with or without delinquent behaviors.

BACKGROUND: It is well known that patients with bipolar disorder are more prone to violence and have more criminal behaviors than general population. A strong relationship between criminal behavior and inability to empathize and imperceptions to other person's feelings and facial expressions increases the risk of delinquent behaviors. In this study, we aimed to investigate the deficits of facial emotion recognition ability in euthymic bipolar patients who committed an offense and compare with non-delinquent euthymic patients with bipolar disorder. METHOD: Fifty-five euthymic patients with delinquent behaviors and 54 non-delinquent euthymic bipolar patients as a control group were included in the study. Ekman's Facial Emotion Recognition Test, sociodemographic data, Hare Psychopathy Checklist, Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and Young Mania Rating Scale were applied to both groups. RESULTS: There were no significant differences between case and control groups in the meaning of average age, gender, level of education, mean age onset of disease and suicide attempt (p>0.05). The three types of most committed delinquent behaviors in patients with euthymic bipolar disorder were as follows: injury (30.8%), threat or insult (20%) and homicide (12.7%). The best accurate percentage of identified facial emotion was "happy" (>99%, for both) while the worst misidentified facial emotion was "fear" in both groups (<50%, for both). The total accuracy rate of recognition toward facial emotions was significantly impaired in patients with delinquent behaviors than non-delinquent ones (p<0.05). The accuracy rate of recognizing the fear expressions was significantly worse in the case group than in the control group (p<0.05). In addition, it tended to be worse toward angry facial expressions in criminal euthymic bipolar patients. The response times toward happy, fear, disgusted and angry expressions had been significantly longer in the case group than in the control group (p<0.05). CONCLUSION: This study is the first, searching the ability of facial emotion recognition in euthymic patients with bipolar disorder who had delinquent behaviors. We have shown that patients with bipolar disorder who had delinquent behaviors may have some social interaction problems i.e., misrecognizing fearful and modestly anger facial emotions and need some more time to response facial emotions even in remission.