Basic Emotions in Clinical Depression During Acute Illness and Inpatient Treatment: Correlations with Change in Emotional Clarity

In our longitudinal study, we examined self-reported or explicit basic emotions, i.e., happiness, sadness, anxiety, and anger, in depressed patients during acute illness and inpatient treatment. For exploratory purposes, we also assessed implicit emotions. We analyzed how changes in emotional clarity relate to changes in emotions and depressive symptoms. A sample of depressed inpatients (n = 52) was examined at admission and on average after seven weeks of multimodal psychiatric treatment. A healthy control group (n = 52) was tested at the same time interval. Basic emotions were measured via the Differential Emotions Scale and a discrete-emotions variant of the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test. Emotional clarity was measured with the WEFG scales. Patients reported lower explicit happiness and heightened explicit sadness, anxiety, and anger compared to healthy controls, regardless of time of measurement. Across groups and time points, implicit happiness was greater than implicit sadness, anxiety, and anger, with no group differences. Patients’ emotional clarity improved and correlated with improvements in depressive symptoms, explicit happiness, sadness, and implicit anger. In summary, depressed patients experience heightened anxiety and anger, suggesting broader alterations of negative emotions beyond sadness. Increased emotional clarity during treatment was found to be correlated with changes in explicit and implicit affectivity.