Judgment of facial expressions and depression persistence

In research it has been demonstrated that cognitive and interpersonal processes play significant roles in depression development and persistence. The judgment of emotions displayed in facial expressions by depressed patients allows for a better understanding of these processes. In this study, 48 major depression outpatients and healthy control subjects, matched on the gender of the patients, judged facial expressions as to the emotions the expressions displayed. These judgments were conducted at the patients' outpatient admission (T1). The depression severity of the patients was measured at T1, 13 weeks later (T2) and at a 6-month follow-up (T3). It was found that the judgment of negative emotions in the facial expressions was related to both the depression severity at T1 and depression persistence (T2 and T3), whereas the judgment of positive emotions was not related to the patients' depression. The judgment of the emotion of sadness was the best predictor of the patients' depression persistence. Additionally, it was found that the patients judged significantly more sadness in the facial expressions than the control subjects. These findings are related to previous data of facial expression judgments of depressed patients and future research directions are discussed.