Facial Affective Behavior in Mental Disorder

Facial behavior can be seen as one part of more general behavior to create specific relationship patterns by communicating distinct affective information. Previous results on disorder-specific facial affective behavior are mixed: thus, a disorder-related specificity of facial affective expression has been called into question. We examined the facial affective behavior of patients attending a clinical interview that focused on different and often difficult aspects of life. Facial affective behavior was coded with FACS in 90 female subjects: 74 patients with different mental disorders and 16 healthy controls. Differences in facial affective behavior (according to EmFACS) between diagnostic groups (those with borderline personality disorder, depression, anxiety disorders, somatoform disorders, eating disorders, and healthy controls) were calculated. Hierarchical cluster analysis was performed to detect subgroups of facial affective patterns, and the clusters were linked to disorder groups. Frequencies of facial affective behavior were correlated with clinical severity scores. No significant differences in facial affective behavior between diagnostic groups were found. Furthermore, no group-specific facial lead affect was found in this sample: all groups showed disgust as the most frequent expression. Additionally, frequency of facial affective behavior was not substantially related to clinical severity variables. Clusters of facial affective behavior could be extracted but were neither related to diagnostic groups nor to clinical severity scores. Our results fail to find evidence for disorder-specific facial affective behavior. Possible reasons for our results, such as the problem-focused clinical interview, high comorbidity, the non-dyadic analysis, and the insufficiency of analyzing pure frequencies, are discussed.