“Theory of mind” represents the cognitive ability to attribute mental states as belonging to others and it's essential in any social interaction.

Our objective was to evaluate the capacity of emotion recognition in patients with recurrent depressive disorder.

This study aimed to determine if theory of mind is influenced by psychotic features and the type of emotions distinguished.

We analyzed a sample of 45 patients with a diagnosis of recurrent depressive disorder (WHO ICD10) that was divided to include 23 patients with at least one episode with psychotic symptoms, while the rest had no history of psychotic symptoms. The “Reading the mind in the eyes” test was applied in an outpatient setting, in remission. The data has been processed in SPSS.

The study found that 72.72% of patients without psychotic symptoms have a low capacity of emotion attribution, while 27.72% demonstrated a normal capacity (P = 0.00252). The majority with a history of psychotic depression (82.60%) showed a low capacity of emotion recognition, while 17.39% had normal abilities (P = 0). None of the patients showed a high capacity of emotion recognition. There was a significant difference in the frequency of negative emotions recognition by all patients (77.77%), while only a few managed to detect positive emotions (22.22%), regardless of psychotic symptom history.

In itself, a history of recurrent depressive disorder is directly related to a reduced ability to correctly attribute emotions. Moreover, these patients are more likely to detect negative emotions rather than positive ones.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.