Emotional and Visual processing are impaired in those with psychopathologies like Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, and Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Abstract

Context: Current research shows that nearly one in five adults in the United States suffer from mental illnesses (NIMH, 2022). Of these mental illnesses, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and dissociative identity disorder are some of the most debilitating disorders that impact patients. Schizophrenia is often associated with disruption in facial emotion recognition (Tomlinson et al., 2006). Those with bipolar disorder show impairment in non-verbal emotion processing (Rheenen & Rossell, 2013). People who experience long-term trauma are prone to developing dissociative identity disorder, which may affect their social and occupational functioning (Robitz, 2018). In this paper, we will be analyzing current scientific research and determining how these psychopathologies disturb emotional and visual processing. The lack of consolidating research creates a need for this review on these illnesses.
 
 Methods: We searched up key words such as “emotional dysregulation” and “impaired visual processing” pertaining to all three disorders through Google Scholar and selected only articles that were peer-reviewed and published through reliable networks. We also read through each article in order to test the relevance of the articles we found.
 
 Conclusions/Discussion: We hope for these results to inspire future research on how to create therapeutic targets for the disrupted pathways in these diseases. We also want to bring awareness to how these illnesses affect patients on a day-to-day basis and help build scientific understanding on how these disorders manifest biologically in the brain.