Development of a tool to assess Facial Emotion Recognition deficits in mothers with schizophrenia-A preliminary report

There is dearth of studies which have assessed Facial Emotion Recognition Deficits (FERD) in parents and its impact on parenting. To assess FERD in mothers with severe mental illness, a modification of TRENDS (A Tool for Recognition of Emotions in Neuropsychiatric DisorderS) using images of children was developed. Two children emoted six basic emotions,namely happy, sad, fear, anger, surprise and disgust at two different intensities along with neutral facial expressions. These images were then validated by 20 subjects which included 15 healthy controls and 5 qualified psychiatrists.The tool was found to have good inter-rater agreement and internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha + 0.712).