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.

Facial emotion recognition ability: psychiatry nurses versus nurses from other departments.

PURPOSE: Facial emotion recognition is a basic element in non-verbal communication. Although some researchers have shown that recognizing facial expressions may be important in the interaction between doctors and patients, there are no studies concerning facial emotion recognition in nurses. Here, we aimed to investigate facial emotion recognition ability in nurses and compare the abilities between nurses from psychiatry and other departments. METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, sixty seven nurses were divided into two groups according to their departments: psychiatry (n=31); and, other departments (n=36). A Facial Emotion Recognition Test, constructed from a set of photographs from Ekman and Friesen's book "Pictures of Facial Affect", was administered to all participants. RESULTS: In whole group, the highest mean accuracy rate of recognizing facial emotion was the happy (99.14%) while the lowest accurately recognized facial expression was fear (47.71%). There were no significant differences between two groups among mean accuracy rates in recognizing happy, sad, fear, angry, surprised facial emotion expressions (for all, p>0.05). The ability of recognizing disgusted and neutral facial emotions tended to be better in other nurses than psychiatry nurses (p=0.052 and p=0.053, respectively) Conclusion: This study was the first that revealed indifference in the ability of FER between psychiatry nurses and non-psychiatry nurses. In medical education curricula throughout the world, no specific training program is scheduled for recognizing emotional cues of patients. We considered that improving the ability of recognizing facial emotion expression in medical stuff might be beneficial in reducing inappropriate patient-medical stuff interaction.

The relationship between sluggish cognitive tempo and burnout symptoms in psychiatrists with different therapeutic approaches.

Burnout is a serious problem for psychiatrists that has implications for clinical practice and personal health. While burnout is known to affect cognitive functions, no studies have examined the relationship between sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) and burnout. This study aimed to examine this relationship and related factors as socio-demographic, occupational environment in psychiatrists. Participants(n=201, aged between 25 and 52 years,57.7% female) completed socio-demographic information form, Maslach Burnout Inventory and SCT Scale. According to our results, we have shown that total burnout scores and emotional exhaustion (EE) scores were significantly higher in psychiatrists with SCT. SCT scores were positively correlated with mean total burnout, EE, and depersonalization scores. We did not find any differences between subgroups according to departments, therapeutic approaches and gender. In conclusion, we want to highlight that psychiatrists with SCT were more proneness to general burnout symptoms and were more emotionally exhausted regardless of their therapeutic approach or their profession as adult or child/adolescent psychiatrists.