Extrait

Background and study aims Faces play a key role in everyday life; recognising emotions on faces is important to social functioning. This is difficult in some psychiatric disorders – for example, people with depression are unable to identify happiness in faces. We have developed a new computer-based training programme which targets the recognition of facial expression of emotions by initially assessing the threshold for detecting one emotion over another in an ambiguous expression (e.g., a blend of happiness and sadness), and then providing feedback to shift this threshold (e.g., to favour identification of happiness over sadness), promoting the perception of positive emotion over negative emotion. This study aims to establish the effects of emotion recognition training on mood in people with high levels of depressive symptoms over a 6-week follow-up period. Who can participate? Adults aged between 18 and 40 with high levels of depressive symptoms. What does the study involve? The participants will be randomly allocated to either a treatment group, who will receive feedback designed to shift their recognition of ambiguous faces as displaying happiness rather than sadness, or to a control group, who will receive feedback not designed to shift their recognition. Depressive symptoms will be measured at the end of treatment and 2 and 6 weeks after training. What are the potential benefits and risks of participation? Participants would not directly benefit from taking part in this study. However, the information we get from this study may help us to understand the influence of emotion perception on low mood. Where will the study be run from? School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol (UK). When is the study starting and how long will it be expected to run for? The study is expected to run from August 2012 to December 2013. Who is funding the study? Medical Research Council (UK). Who is the main contact? Dr Sally Adams [email protected]

Critère d'inclusion

• Mood Disorders

Liens

• isrctn
• ictrp