Reduced Awareness of Others’ Emotions in Unipolar Depressed Patients

Abstract

The present study was conducted to examine depressed patients' awareness of their own and other persons' emotions in the course of an inpatient psychotherapeutic treatment program. To this aim, the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS) was administered twice, approximately 7 weeks apart, to 22 patients with a unipolar depression and 22 normal controls. From test 1 to test 2, severity of patients' depressive symptoms as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory improved significantly. Depressed patients did not differ from normal individuals on the LEAS-self score, but at time 1, they exhibited lower LEAS-other scores than normal controls. In the whole sample, LEAS-other scores increased significantly from time 1 to time 2. Acutely depressed patients seem not to be impaired in the complexity of their own emotional experience, but they exhibit a reduction in the ability to empathize with other persons.