Empathy and theory of mind deficits in subsyndromal patients with major depressive disorder

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Empathy and theory of mind deficits in subsyndromal patients with major depressive disorder A M Cusi1, 2, 3*, G. MacQueen4 and M C McKinnon1, 2 1 St. Joseph's Healthcare , Canada 2 McMaster University, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, Canada 3 McMaster University, Graduate Program in Neuroscience, Canada 4 University of Calgary, Department of Psychiatry, Canada Despite evidence of impairments in social cognition in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), systematic investigations of empathic and theory of mind (ToM) responding in this population have not been conducted. Patients with subsyndromal depressive symptoms and matched controls completed a battery of social cognitive tasks shown previously to rely on cognitive and affective processing resources. These included self-rated empathy questionnaires such as the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) and Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ), and a ToM test consisting of first-and second-order false-belief questions. Relative to controls, patients reported reduced levels of Perspective Taking and elevated levels of Personal Distress on the IRI (p’s<0.01). Altered cognitive and affective empathic abilities correlated with increased symptom severity, illness duration, and reduced psychosocial functioning in family, leisure, and occupational domains (p’s<0.05). Similarly, reduced levels of empathic responding as assessed by the TEQ was associated with severity of depression and various psychosocial domains (p’s<0.04). Patients were impaired on second-order ToM tests (p=0.05) but performed comparably to controls on first-order ToM measures. Deficits in second-order ToM performance were associated with illness state (p=0.06) and reduced levels of everyday social functioning (p’s<0.02). Illness state, illness burden, and cognitive load may influence social reasoning performance in MDD. Conference: The 20th Annual Rotman Research Institute Conference, The frontal lobes, Toronto, Canada, 22 Mar - 26 Mar, 2010. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Psychiatric Citation: Cusi A, MacQueen G and McKinnon M (2010). Empathy and theory of mind deficits in subsyndromal patients with major depressive disorder. Conference Abstract: The 20th Annual Rotman Research Institute Conference, The frontal lobes. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2010.14.00151 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 01 Jul 2010; Published Online: 01 Jul 2010. * Correspondence: A M Cusi, St. Joseph's Healthcare, Hamilton, Canada, acusi@stjoes.ca Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers A M Cusi G. MacQueen M C McKinnon Google A M Cusi G. MacQueen M C McKinnon Google Scholar A M Cusi G. MacQueen M C McKinnon PubMed A M Cusi G. MacQueen M C McKinnon Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.