A 38-year-old member asked:
What is the difference between shallow and flat affect?
1 doctor answer • 3 doctors weighed in
Dr. Glen Elliottanswered
Child Psychiatry 44 years experience
Quality and degree: Shallow affect refers to people who do not show much range in emotion; they rarely if ever feel intense moods, either highs or lows. Flat affect refers to a near-complete absense of affect: the person simply does not show an emotional response even under pretty extreme conditions such as the loss of a loved one.
5.8k viewsReviewed >2 years ago
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A 47-year-old member asked:
How are shallow affect and flat affect different?
1 doctor answer • 2 doctors weighed in
Dr. James Wellsanswered
Psychiatry 45 years experience
Degree of expression: My understanding: blunted or "shallow affect" describes paucity of emotional expression in response to stimuli that normally provoke typical facial expressions, though still some expression. "flat affect" suggests no facial expression. Causes of these affects include depression, schizophrenia, brain injury, ptsd, sociopathy, and certain medicines. Get help. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/blunted_.
4.6k viewsReviewed >2 years ago
Last updated Feb 2, 2017
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