A comparative study regarding emotional awareness and interpersonal relating abilities in the schizophrenia versus the affective spectra.

Introduction: Social cognitive dysfunctions contribute to the deficits of psychosocial functioning of people on the Schizophrenia Spectrum. Recently, the focus has turned to the area of affective disorders, with respect to social cognition and alexithymia. Objectives: Evaluation of abilities and potential differences in alexithymia and the capacity of facial emotion recognition in individuals suffering with disorders on the schizophrenia or the affective (unipolar depressive) spectrum. Methods: We evaluated two groups of 26 participants each, diagnosed with either a Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorder (SDD) or Recurrent Depressive Disorder (RDD) hospitalized in the Psychiatry Clinic of Timisoara, Romania. The analyzed parameters were: socio-demographic, clinical, alexithymia (Toronto Alexithymia Scale), and the ability to identify emotions (Reading the Mind in the Eye Test). Results: We established that 57.69% of SSD subjects had alexithymia, while 19.23% had possible-alexithymia and 23.07% were nonalexithymic. Most of the subjects had a low ability to identify emotions (84.61%). In regards to theRDDgroup, all 26 participants had alexithymia, while almost 74% of them had a lower than normal ability to correctly identify emotions. Conclusions: The SSD participants showed clear deficits describing and identifying emotions. Overall, the RDD group had similar results, but slightly better abilities of recognizing others' emotions in the eyes. Our results suggest that difficulties recognising facially expressed emotions and alexithymia could possibly be linked in both spectra. These populations may benefit from tailored social skills training and intervention programs that offer service users more accurate recognition of relapse signs leading to timelier help-seeking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]