Risk or resilience? Empathic abilities in patients with bipolar disorders and their first-degree relatives (original) (raw)
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Schizophrenia Research, 2012
Empathy is a rather elaborated human ability and several recent studies highlight significant impairments in patients suffering from psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or major depression. Therefore, the present study aimed at comparing behavioral empathy performance in schizophrenia, bipolar and depressed patients with healthy controls. All subjects performed three tasks tapping the core components of empathy: emotion recognition, emotional perspective taking and affective responsiveness. Groups were matched for age, gender, and verbal intelligence. Data analysis revealed three main findings: First, schizophrenia patients showed the strongest impairment in empathic performance followed by bipolar patients while depressed patients performed similar to controls in most tasks, except for affective responsiveness. Second, a significant association between clinical characteristics and empathy performance was only apparent in depression, indicating worse affective responsiveness with stronger symptom severity and longer duration of illness. Third, self-report data indicate that particularly bipolar patients describe themselves as less empathic, reporting less empathic concern and less perspective taking. Taken together, this study constitutes the first approach to directly compare specificity of empathic deficits in severe psychiatric disorders. Our results suggest disorder-specific impairments in emotional competencies that enable better characterization of the patient groups investigated and indicate different psychotherapeutic interventions.
Emotion Processing Deficit in Euthymic Bipolar Disorder: A Potential Endophenotype
Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine, 2021
Background: Emotion processing deficits have been described in patients with bipolar disorder (BD) and are considered one of the core cognitive abnormalities in BD with endophenotype potential. However, the literature on specific impairments in emotion processing cognitive strategies (directive/cortical/higher versus intuitive/limbic/lower) in euthymic adult BD patients and healthy first-degree relatives/high-risk (HR) subjects in comparison with healthy controls (HCs) is sparse. Methods: We examined facial emotion recognition deficits (FERD) in BD ( N = 30), HR ( N = 21), and HC ( N = 30) matched for age (years), years of education, and sex using computer-administered face emotions–Matching And Labeling Task (eMALT). Results: The three groups were significantly different based on labeling accuracy scores for fear and anger (FA) (P < 0.001) and sad and disgust (SD) (P < 0.001). On post-hoc analysis, HR subjects exhibited a significant deficit in the labeling accuracy of FA fac...
Comprehensive Psychiatry, 2014
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 N 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" (N99%, for both) while the worst misidentified facial emotion was "fear" in both groups (b50%, for both). The total accuracy rate of recognition toward facial emotions was significantly impaired in patients with delinquent behaviors than non-delinquent ones (p b 0.05). The accuracy rate of recognizing the fear expressions was significantly worse in the case group than in the control group (p b 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 b 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.
Neurocognition in first-degree healthy relatives (siblings) of bipolar affective disorder patients
Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 2008
Aim: Cognitive deficits have been presupposed to be endophenotypic markers in bipolar disorder, but few studies have ascertained the cognitive deficits in healthy relatives of bipolar disorder patients. The aim of the present study was to assess the cognitive functions of first-degree relatives of patients with bipolar disorder and compare them with healthy controls.Methods: Ten first-degree apparently healthy relatives of patients with bipolar disorder were compared with 10 age- and education-matched control subjects on computer-based cognitive tests.Results: As compared to the control group, the relatives group performed significantly poorly on tests for executive function and vigilance, while on the test for working memory the performance was not significantly different on most of the parameters.Conclusions: Executive functioning and vigilance could be potential markers of the endophenotype in bipolar patients.
Risk for Bipolar Disorder Is Associated With Face-Processing Deficits Across Emotions
Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 2008
Objective-Euthymic bipolar disorder (BD) youths have a deficit in face emotion labeling that is present across multiple emotions. Recent research indicates that youths at familial risk for BD, but without a history of mood disorder, also have a deficit in face emotion labeling, suggesting that such impairments may be an endophenotype for BD. It is unclear if this deficit in at-risk youths is present across all emotions or if the impairment presents initially as an emotion-specific dysfunction that then generalizes to other emotions as the symptoms of BD become manifest.
Schizophrenia Research, 2014
This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. Contributors ACR drafted the manuscript. JLR completed familiality analyses. LHR undertook the statistical analysis, drafted the statistical analysis and results sections, and prepared all tables and figures. ARD managed the literature searches. RCG created the emotion recognition task and consulted on the manuscript. JLR, CAT, GDP, MSK and JAS designed the study and wrote the protocol. All authors contributed to and have approved the final manuscript.
Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria, 2013
Objective: To analyze the recognition, identification, and discrimination of facial emotions in a sample of outpatients with bipolar disorder (BD). Methods: Forty-four outpatients with diagnosis of BD and 48 matched control subjects were selected. Both groups were assessed with tests for recognition (Emotion Recognition-40-ER40), identification (Facial Emotion Identification Test-FEIT), and discrimination (Facial Emotion Discrimination Test-FEDT) of facial emotions, as well as a theory of mind (ToM) verbal test (Hinting Task). Differences between groups were analyzed, controlling the influence of mild depressive and manic symptoms. Results: Patients with BD scored significantly lower than controls on recognition (ER40), identification (FEIT), and discrimination (FEDT) of emotions. Regarding the verbal measure of ToM, a lower score was also observed in patients compared to controls. Patients with mild syndromal depressive symptoms obtained outcomes similar to patients in euthymia. A significant correlation between FEDT scores and global functioning (measured by the Functioning Assessment Short Test, FAST) was found. Conclusions: These results suggest that, even in euthymia, patients with BD experience deficits in recognition, identification, and discrimination of facial emotions, with potential functional implications.
Aberrant cognition in newly diagnosed patients with bipolar disorder and their unaffected relatives
Psychological Medicine, 2019
BackgroundPatients with bipolar disorder (BD) experience persistent impairments in both affective and non-affective cognitive function, which is associated with a worse course of illness and poor functional outcomes. Nevertheless, the temporal progression of cognitive dysfunction in BD remains unclear and the identification of objective endophenotypes can inform the aetiology of BD.MethodsThe present study is a cross-sectional investigation of cognitive baseline data from the longitudinal Bipolar Illness Onset-study. One hundred seventy-two remitted patients newly diagnosed with BD, 52 of their unaffected relatives (UR), and 110 healthy controls (HC) were compared on a large battery of behavioural cognitive tasks tapping into non-affective (i.e. neurocognitive) and affective (i.e. emotion processing and regulation) cognition.ResultsRelative to HCs, patients with BD exhibited global neurocognitive deficits (ps < 0.001), as well as aberrant emotion processing and regulation (ps â©˝ 0...
Impaired emotion processing in remitted patients with bipolar disorder
Journal of Affective Disorders, 2006
In the present study, we examined whether there is an impairment in affect matching abilities in remitted patients with bipolar disorder and if this could be attributed to problems with facial perception per se and/or the ability to perceive the relative valence of facial expressions indicating emotions.
Facial emotion recognition in patients with bipolar I and bipolar II disorder
British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 2009
Objectives. The ability to recognize facial emotional expressions is a fundamental skill that is necessary for successful social interaction. Previous studies examining this competency in patients with bipolar disorder have generated mixed results. Since bipolar patients show multiple psychosocial difficulties even after remission, this study was aimed at further elucidating emotion recognition deficits in bipolar patients.