The effects of depression on the emotional responses of Spanish-speaking Latinas.

Abstract

Emotional responses (physiology, self-report, and facial expression) of 12 depressed and 10 nondepressed Spanish-speaking Latinas during sad and amusing film clips of human and animal content were compared. Depressed Latinas demonstrated less electrodermal reactivity across all the film clips and displayed fewer social smiles during the amusing-human film clip than nondepressed Latinas. No differences emerged for cardiovascular measures, reports of emotion, or facial expressions of happiness and negative emotion. Observed differences in electrodermal reactivity are similar to results from previous studies of Anglo Americans, suggesting that reduced electrodermal activity may be linked to depression across cultures. The findings also suggest that, for Latinas, depression may selectively alter expressions that serve interpersonal functions.

Facial expression to emotional stimuli in non-psychotic disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Regarding positive emotions, four studies (Berenbaum and Oltmanns, 1992;Renneberg et al, 2005;Sloan et al, 2001;Tsai et al, 2003) found fewer facial expressions in the clinical group for at least one of the outcome variables, with ES ranging from d=.8 to d=3.6. One study found more positive expressions in depressed patients compared to HC with a medium effect (Rottenberg et al, 2005) and two studies found no effects of group on expression of positive emotions (ChentsovaDutton et al, 2007;Rottenberg et al, 2002).…”

“…Six of these studies used film clips to induce emotions (Berenbaum and Oltmanns, 1992;Chentsova-Dutton et al, 2007;Renneberg et al, 2005;Rottenberg et al, 2005Rottenberg et al, , 2002Tsai et al, 2003) and one used emotional pictures (Sloan et al, 2001). Renneberg et al (2005) was the only study to use EMG, the others used an observational coding system in order to assess emotional expression.…”

Predicting levels of Latino depression: Acculturation, acculturative stress, and coping.

“…Previous research has established clinical cutoff scores to differentiate clinical from nonclinical populations. A commonly used cutoff is a score of 16 or greater (Posner, Stewart, Marin, & Perez-Stable, 2001;Tsai, Pole, Levenson, & Muñoz, 2003). A more stringent criterion, a CES-D score of 24 or greater, has also been used in the research, particularly to screen for major depressive disorder (Clarke et al, 1995).…”

Parental Depression Risk and Reduced Physiological Responses During a Valence Identification Task

“…It is also conceptually consistent with either decreased emotional reactivity (Allen et al 1999;Lawrence et al 2004;Tsai et al 2003;Rottenberg et al 2002Rottenberg et al , 2005a or decreased regulatory control, which has been consistently implicated in vulnerability to depression (e.g., Verstraeten et al 2009). Pupil dilation increases with activation from neural structures such as the amygdala, hypothalamus, and prefrontal cortex, as well as from increased sympathetic or decreased parasympathetic nervous system input (Siegle et al 2003b(Siegle et al , 2011Steinhauer et al 2004).…”

“…Consistent with this perspective, in contrast to healthy controls, depressed individuals have shown undifferentiated startle responses when viewing negative, positive, and neutral picture stimuli (Allen et al 1999; also see Tsai et al 2003), and reduced physiological reactivity to positive and negative stimuli has predicted worse depression treatment outcomes (Rottenberg et al 2002(Rottenberg et al , 2005c. Thus, decreased or context-insensitive responding may correspond with insufficient adaptation to environmental contingencies and stressors (Coifman and Bonnano 2009;Waugh et al 2011), and impeded recovery from depression.…”