Dr. Armand Hausmann – Ihr Psychiater in Innsbruck
Facial affect recognition in symptomatically remitted patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder

Vortrag Univ.-Prof. Dr. Armand Hausmann: Facial affect recognition in symptomatically remitted patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder

Publikationen (Erstautor oder Mitautor) von Univ.-Prof. Dr. Armand Hausmann

Both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (BD) have consistently been associated with deficits in facial affect rec ognition (FAR). These impairments have been related to various aspects of social competence and functioning and are relatively stable over time. However, individuals in remission may outperform patients experiencing an acute phase of the disorders. The present study directly contrasted FAR in symptomatically remitted patients with schizophrenia or BD and healthy volunteers and investigated its relationship with patients‘ outcomes. Compared to healthy control subjects, schizophrenia patients were impaired in the recognition of angry, disgust ed, sad and happy facial expressions, while BD patients showed deficits only in the recognition of disgusted and happy facial expressions. When directly comparing the two patient groups individuals suffering from BD outperformed those with schizophrenia in the recognition of expressions depicting anger. There was no signifi cant association between affect recognition abilities and symptomatic or psychosocial outcomes in schizophrenia patients. Among BD patients, relatively higher depression scores were associated with impairments in both the identification of happy faces and psychosocial functioning. Overall, our findings indicate that during periods of symptomatic remission the recognition of facial affect may be less impaired in patients with BD than in those suffering from schizophrenia. However, in the psychosocial context BD patients seem to be more sensitive to residual symptomatology

Autoren: Nursen Yalcin-Siedentopf, Christine M. Hoertnagl, Falko Biedermann, Susanne Baumgartner, Eberhard A. Deisenhammer, Armand Hausmann, Alexandra Kaufmann, Georg Kemmler, Moritz Mühlbacher, Anna-Sophia Rauch, W. Wolfgang Fleischhacker, Alex Hofer

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