Association between face-emotion recognition and social functionality in patients diagnosed with schzophrenia and its comparison with healthy controls

Objective: The aims of this study were to investigate the ability of face and emotion recognition; and define the relation of emotion and face regonition performance with the level of social functionality in schizophrenic patients. Method: This descriptive and cross sectional study was made in Akdeniz University Psychiatry Policlinic. 60 patients diagnosed with Schizophrenia according to DSM-V diagnostic criteria without alcohol and substance using disorder were included in this study. 60 healthy people who had never had any psychiatric/psychologic treatment and who were statistically same with the patient group on age, gender and education were chosen in control group. All participants were given a Socio-demographic Data Form designed by researchers for face to face question-answer, Eye Test, Benton Face Recognition, Social Functioning Scale, Structured Clinical Interview for DSM 5. Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale was applied only to the patient group. Data was analyzed using 'R' program which belongs to "R Core Team". Results: Low ability and competence of emotion, face recognition and social functionality are demonstrated in schizophrenic patients. Only positive symptomatic schizophrenics showed better face recognition ability likewise control group, in addition, improving recognition of emotion and face was associated with improving interpersonal functions in this subgroup. However, increased recognition of emotion was associated with decreased interpersonal functions in mixed symptomatic schizophrenics; and was associated with decreased social functioning in negative symptomatic schizophrenic subgroup. Recreation and wasting time activities were increased in conjunction with decreased emotion recognition in all schizophrenia and negative symptomatic schizophrenics. In addition it was observed that decreased emotion recognition was associated with increased negative symptoms, particularly alogia and attention deficts; while there was no relationship between emotion recognition and positive symptoms. On the contrary, It was found that increased face recognition was associated with increasing positive symptoms, especially delusions and bizarre behaviors. Conclusion: It has been observed that in Schizophrenic patients, face and emotion recognition abilities are decreasing. This disorder increases while the negative findings deepen. There have been different results on relationship between emotion recognition and social functionality among the groups of schizophrenic patients. The outcomes of the study indicate that there has been no simple and linear relevance. The relevance is indirect and is affected by the other factors. As a conclusion providing exclusive social environment and treatment which is focused on adaptation of interpersonal functionality for individual patient is important.