Recognition of facial expression of emotion in patients with depression and normal people

One of the emotional factors involved in major depressive disorder is recognition of facial expression of emotion. The aim of present study was to compare the recognition of facial expression of emotion in patients with major depressive disorder and normal people. 20 patients with major depression and 20 normal people were selected using available sampling method and responded to Ekman and Frisen (1976) recognition of facial expression of emotion test (α=0.71). The Method of this project was case- control; and multivariate analysis of variance was used for data analysis. The findings showed that there was a significant difference between normal (M= 26.95, SD= 2.68) and depressed (M= 22.65, SD= 3.97) subjects in terms of recognition of facial expression of emotion (P<.05), so normal people was better than people with major depressive disorder in terms of this variable. The defect in recognition of facial expression of emotion is a construction which can have a significant role in deterioration of major depression symptoms.