Appropriateness of Affect
June 22nd, 2019
Overview
The appropriateness of affect refers to the congruence between a patient's emotional expression and the content of their speech.
Interpretation
- Appropriate: correlation between the content of speech and the accompanying emotional expression.
- Inappropriate: lack of correlation between the content of speech and the accompanying emotional expression. The patient may laugh while discussing depression or cry while claiming to be happy.Schizophrenia, traumatic brain injury, certain personality disorders, substances
- Incongruous: lack of correlation between affect and stated mood. The patient may claim to be depressed but without flattened affect, e.g. laughs at jokes.Conversion disorder, dissociative disorders, factitious disorder, malingering
- Fatuous: inappropriate affect that is overly childlike.Hebephrenia, intellectual disability, inappropriate coping mechanism e.g. in an eating disorder.
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