| Grant number: | 11/51732-6 |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral |
| Start date: | May 01, 2012 |
| End date: | April 30, 2015 |
| Field of knowledge: | Humanities - Psychology - Psychological Treatment and Prevention |
| Principal Investigator: | Clarice Gorenstein |
| Grantee: | Juliana Teixeira Fiquer |
| Host Institution: | Instituto de Psiquiatria Doutor Antonio Carlos Pacheco e Silva (IPq). Hospital das Clínicas da Faculdade de Medicina da USP (HCFMUSP). Secretaria da Saúde (São Paulo - Estado). São Paulo , SP, Brazil |
Abstract Depression is a mood disorder which has a negative impact on individuals and society. Evidence of persistent diagnostic problems, high recurrence, morbidity and mortality suggest the need for improvement in objective parameters when assessing this disorder. One particularly poorly investigated topic in depression literature is the expressive nonverbal behavior of patients. Nonverbal communication is based mainly on automatic and reflex responses. Due to this fact, it facilitates the access to information about emotional states and social motivations that are not quite so easily expressed verbally. This means that nonverbal communication may act as an access gateway to automatic emotional processes which negatively influence individuals' affective states, as well as their interaction with the environment. We believe, therefore, that it might be a helpful tool in the diagnostic, prognostic and clinical improvement assessments. The objective of this research is to expand the knowledge about nonverbal expressive behavior in depression. During clinical interviews we shall investigate differences in: 1) the expressiveness of depressed patients and healthy controls, 2) the expressiveness of different subgroups of depressed patients, and 3) the expressiveness of judgment made by the patients themselves, interviewers and observers from outside of the clinical setting. Since the majority of nonverbal communication studies in psychiatric settings are performed with Caucasian samples, the evaluation of Brazilian patients may also provide insights into cultural issues involved in the expressiveness of depressed people. These results should help in mapping relevant behavioral variables to the diagnostic and treatment of the disorder, and to evaluate the effectiveness/ agreement of different methods of measuring non-verbal behavior in clinical settings. (AU) | |
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