I Cannot Read Your Eye Expression: Suicide Attempters
Have Difficulties in Interpreting Complex Social Emotions
1
UV - Universitat de València
2
Neuropsychiatrie : recherche épidémiologique et clinique
3
CHRU Montpellier - Centre Hospitalier Régional Universitaire [Montpellier]
4
Fondation FondaMental [Créteil]
Abstract : Background: The
ability to differentiate emotions in social contexts is important for
dealing with challenging social situations. Suicide attempters show some
difficulties in emotion recognition that may result in hypersensitivity
to social stress. However, other studies on the recognition of social
complex emotions found that suicide attempters have similar performances
as depressed non-attempters. Objectives: To investigate differences in
social emotion recognition in patients with current Major Depressive
Episode (MDE) with and without history of suicide attempt. Methods: Two
hundred and ten patients with MDE were recruited among whom 115 had
lifetime history of suicide attempt (suicide attempters, SA) and 95 did
not (affective controls, AC). Recognition of complex social emotions was
assessed using the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET). Emotions
were separated in three valence categories: positive, negative, and
neutral. Verbal intelligence quotient (IQ) and attention were measured
with the National Adult Reading Task (NART) and the d2 test,
respectively. Results: Mixed logistic regression models adjusted for
sex, lifetime bipolar disorder, verbal IQ and attention showed that the
RMET performance for neutral emotions was worse in the SA than AC group
(OR = 0.87 [0.75, 0.99]). Furthermore, when violent/serious SA were
compared to non-violent/non-serious SA and AC, the RMET neutral valence
category showed a trend for group factor (p < 0.059) and RMET scores
were lower in the violent/serious SA than AC group (OR = 0.79 [0.64,
0.96]). Conclusion: Recognition of neutral emotions is poor in SA and
this may complicate their daily life. Interventions to improve the
understanding of complex emotions may be helpful to prevent suicidal
risk in patients with depression.
Soumis le : vendredi 14 mai 2021
Acces Article https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7683427/pdf/fpsyt-11-543889.pdf