How does anxiety disorder diagnosis affect emotion recognition, empathy and social responsiveness in adolescence?

Abstract

Objective: We aimed to evaluate the association between the existence of an anxiety disorder (AD) diagnosis in adolescents and social cognition skills such as emotion recognition, empathy and social responsiveness and to compare the results with healthy control group (CG). The second aim of study was to compare the factors affecting social cognition skills in adolescents with ADs with CG. Method: Psychiatric assessments and diagnoses were evaluated by clinical interview based on DSM-5 and Kiddieschedule for affective disorders and schizophrenia-present and lifetime version-Turkish Adaptation (K-SADS-PL-T). Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) and Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy (DANVA) was applied to the participants. Sociodemographic form, Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS), Griffith Empathy Measure (GEM), Strengths and Diffuculties Questionnaire (SDQ), KA-SI Empathic Tendency Scale (KA-SI ETS) were used. Results: 87 admissions in total were examined for our study. 58 (66.6 %) of the admissions were cases with AD and 29 (33.3%) were the control group. AD group consisted of 34 female adolescents (58.6 %), whereas control group consisted of 17 female adolescents (58.6 %). The average age was 14.06 +/- 2.12 (years) and 13.51 +/- 2.23 (years), respectively. The adolescents with AD had significantly higher social responsiveness problem scores than the CG after adjusting hyperactivity levels but no difference was found between the two groups in terms of empathy level and emotion recognition. Discussion: There has been a impairment in social responsiveness in the presence of the AD. It was found that this impairment occurs when anxiety disorder is accompanied by both hyperactivity and low cognitive empathy.