Volume 4 Issue 2 February, 2014
Blunted Affect
There was a patient admitted to the ward, may be 3rd or 4th time by then. He was around 45 years, married and without an offspring. During the rounds on several occasions I had commented about his shallow affect and even told my students that he has that typical blunted affect. Once I happened to see him in our canteen seated with a woman and a girl of about 5years of age. I was surprised to see him talking to the young girl jokingly and even making faces to amuse her. I had never imagined that he has this ability to express emotions, so appropriately and whole heartedly. It was obvious that he had not noticed my presence there. The event made me wonder about the validity of inferences that we draw based on observing our patients in the ward or in the consultation room, which are not their natural
habitat. Even we, the normal persons, have different ways of modulating our emotional expressions based on the context. We often appear to forget this when judging our patients’ emotional expressions.
