Facial emotion recognition in remitted depressed women

Although major depressive disorder (MDD) is primarily characterized by mood symptoms, depressed patients have impairments in facial emotion recognition in many of the basic emotions (anger, fear, happiness, surprise, disgust and sadness). On the other hand, the data in remitted MDD (rMDD) patients is inconsistent and it is not clear that if those impairments persist in remission. To extend the current findings, we applied facial emotion recognition test to a group of remitted depressed women and compared to those of controls. Analyses of variance results showed a significant emotion and group interaction, and in the post hoc analyses, rMDD patients had higher accuracy rate for recognition of sadness compared to those of controls. There were no differences in the reaction time among the patients and controls across the all the basic emotions. The higher recognition rates for sad faces in rMDD patients might contribute to the impairments in social communication and the prognosis of the disease.