Desempenho cognitivo e reconhecimento de expressões faciais das emoções com estímulos estáticos e dinâmicos em idosos com e sem depressão maior

Abstract

Background: Depression in late life is associated with worse prognosis, a more chronic course and a higher rate of relapse compared to younger patients, and cognitive impairment, involving domains such as memory, attention and function executive. Moreover, individuals with major depression tend to interpret information considered imprecise in a negative light, which can exert a direct effect on their capacity to decode social stimuli. Objective: Two studies were developed with the following objectives: 1) to compare the cognitive performance and functional capacity in older adults with and without current major depression; 2) to compare basic facial expression recognition skills during tasks with static and dynamic stimuli in older adults with and without major depression. Methods: This is a cross-sectional, descriptive and analytical study based on quantitative research and the groups were matched for the sex, age and schooling. Older adults were selected through a screening process for psychiatric disorders at a primary care service. Psychiatric evaluations were performed using the criteria of the DSM-5. In the first study, 24 older adults with depression and 199 older adults without depression were selected and evaluated by the following instruments: Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Brief Cognitive Battery (BBRC), Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer’s Disease (CERAD), forward and backward digit span test, similarity subtest of CAMDEX and World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule -WHODAS2.0. At the second study, twenty-three adults with a diagnosis of depression and 23 older adults without a psychiatric diagnosis were asked to perform two facial emotion recognition tasks using static and dynamic stimuli. Results: Statistic differences were found between the groups in the variable of functional capacity (p=0,009). No statistic differences were found between groups related to cognitive domains. In addition, the individuals with major depression demonstrated greater accuracy in recognizing sadness (p = 0.023) and anger (p = 0.024) during the task with static stimuli and less accuracy in recognizing happiness during the task with dynamic stimuli (p = 0.020). Conclusions: Older adults with major depression show impairment functional capacity. Likewise, the performance of older adults with depression in facial expression recognition tasks with static and dynamic stimuli differs from that of older adults without depression, with greater accuracy regarding negative emotions (sadness and anger) and lower accuracy regarding the recognition of happiness.