Facial emotion recognition ability in patients with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders

Background: Psychotic disorders are associated with impaired facial emotion recognition (FER) and poor functional outcome. Most studies regarding facial emotion recognition have focused on schizophrenia. The aim of this study was to explore FER in patients with different psychotic disorders at psychiatric outpatient facilities. The intention was also to examine if patients diagnosed with schizophrenia differed from patients diagnosed with other psychotic disorders in the ability to recognize facial emotions. Methods: FER was examined in forty outpatients, evenly divided between schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders and 33 healthy control per-sons. The ability to recognize facial emotions was assessed with The Facially Expressed Emotion Labelling (FEEL). To assess the severity of psychotic symptoms in the patient group The Structured Clinical Interview for Symptoms of Remission (SCI-SR) was used. Results: Patients performed significantly worse than healthy controls (p