Rarely, people need surgery to fix rigid flat feet or problems with bones or tendons. Treatments include: Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), rest and ice to ease inflammation and pain. Physical therapies to stretch and strengthen tight tendons and muscles, improving flexibility and mobility.
- Medications. If a medication is causing your flat affect, your doctor may change the type of medication you're taking or the dosage. ...
- Psychotherapy. ...
- Social skills training. ...
- Speech therapy. ...
- Couples counseling or family therapy.
What is flat affect and how it can be treated?
Treatment for flat affect often depends on the underlying cause. A plan of action should begin by consulting with a psychologist or psychiatrist who diagnoses and treats mental health conditions. Flat affect can be treated to some degree. It often requires comprehensive therapy, including working with a healthcare provider and taking medication.
What does it mean to have a flat affect?
Flat affect is a condition in which a person does not display emotions to the degree that other members of his or her culture would normally exhibit. It is used loosely to mean a dampening of these emotions, but clinically, it is usually reserved for more serious cases where patients may appear nearly inanimate or lacking emotional function.
What causes a flat effect?
- Schizophrenia: It is a mental illness in which the affected person has hallucinations both auditory and visual. ...
- Depression: The imbalance of chemical that results from depression may lead to flat affect like symptom.
- Brain injury: Injury to brain can produce various symptoms such as apathy and depression. ...
What is flat affect a symptom of?
Flat affect can be brought on by different conditions. This is a serious, long-term mental illness. Some symptoms include: A flat affect can be a negative symptom of schizophrenia, meaning that your emotional expressions don’t show. You may speak in a dull, flat voice and your face may not change.
How do you treat blunted affect?
Treatment for blunted affect often involves treating the underlying diagnosis. If the person has no diagnosis, a therapist can still help them practice recognizing and communicating emotions. With time and help, a person can become better at expressing their feelings.
Does flat affect go away?
Because blunted affect is a symptom of an underlying disorder or of a medication for a disorder, doctors usually treat the disorder. There's some evidence that treating the disorder may improve the ability to express emotion somewhat, but blunted affect is sometimes permanent.
Do antipsychotics help with flat affect?
In addition to evaluating your medication—since some meds can cause flat affect—your mental health provider can prescribe antipsychotic medications to control symptoms of schizophrenia, including delusions and hallucinations.
What happens if flat affects?
Those with flat affect have no response to emotional stimuli. Blunted affect, however, describes a dulled or constricted response, where a person's emotional response is not as intense as normally expected. Blunted affect is commonly seen in those with post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD.
How do you fix a flat affect?
Can flat affect be treated?Medications. If a medication is causing your flat affect, your doctor may change the type of medication you're taking or the dosage. ... Psychotherapy. ... Social skills training. ... Speech therapy. ... Couples counseling or family therapy.
How do you get someone out of a catatonic state?
Doctors usually treat catatonia with a kind of sedative called a benzodiazepine that's often used to ease anxiety. Another treatment option is electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). It sends electrical impulses to the person's brain through electrodes placed on their head.
How do you get an emotionless face?
To look entirely emotionless, start by relaxing your eyes and mouth since your face can express a multitude of emotions. After you relax your face, you'll still want to make eye contact, but pretend your looking at a chair or something else neutral.
Why do I have an expressionless face?
Lack of facial expressions is one sign of catatonia, which can occur in association with a psychiatric disorder, like schizophrenia. Diseases that cause damage to the brain and its function can also lead to a lack of responsiveness, including a lack of facial expressions. Examples include brain trauma and encephalitis.
What causes lack of facial expression?
It can be caused by motor impairment (for example, weakness or paralysis of the facial muscles), as in Parkinson's disease, or by other causes, such as psychological or psychiatric factors (for example, if a patient does not feel emotions and thus does not show any expression).
Can antidepressants cause flat affect?
This refers to the drugs' effects — they cause the brain to produce more serotonin, a chemical that makes a person feel happier. In producing these feelings, however, antidepressants dull the intensity of all emotions. This is what's meant by feeling flat or emotionless.
What does flat affect mean in medical terms?
Flat affect: A severe reduction in emotional expressiveness. People with depression and schizophrenia often show flat affect. A person with schizophrenia may not show the signs of normal emotion, perhaps may speak in a monotonous voice, have diminished facial expressions, and appear extremely apathetic.
How can I improve my facial expressions?
7 Ways to Improve Your Facial Expressions During a PerformanceRelax your jaw and your tongue inside your mouth.Lift your eyebrows a little—like you would when you're having an interesting conversation with someone.Take in your surroundings with your eyes.More items...
What is flat affect?
Flat affect is characterized by a lack of response to emotional stimuli. This may include having a neutral facial expression. Symptoms of flat affect can include: lack of eye contact, changes in facial expressions, or interest. Typically, a particular experience or situation will produce an emotional response in someone, such as elation, fear, ...
Why do people with schizophrenia have flat affects?
The flat affect experienced by those with schizophrenia is due to an impairment in the way they function on an emotional level . It is deemed a negative side effect of the disease, as it is not in line with normally expected emotions and behaviors.
Why do people with flat affect not have emotions?
Those with flat affect do not lack emotion, but rather their emotions are thought to be unexpressed. This visual or verbal absent can be caused by conditions that include schizophrenia, autism, depression, and traumatic brain injury. Emotions to stimuli that are not expressed by people with flat affect include facial, ...
What is the best treatment for flat affect?
Cognitive behavioral therapy , or CBT, is one of the most researched models of therapy used in the treatment of schizophrenia. CBT can help people with flat affect begin to recognize how their emotionless response does not match what is required in a specific situation. 5
What is flat affect?
Coping and Support. Flat affect (diminished emotional expression) is a hallmark symptom of schizophrenia, although it may also affect those with other conditions. It is a lack of showing emotion characterized by an apathetic and unchanging facial expression and little or no change in the strength, tone, or pitch of the voice.
What is the best therapy for schizophrenia?
Social skills training, a type of behavioral therapy , can also be used to teach people with schizophrenia to express feelings and needs, ask questions, and control their voice, body, and facial expressions. Speech therapy can help with tone and modulation of voice to convey more emotion. How Behavioral Therapy Works.
Why do people have flat affect?
It is hypothesized that it is due to differences in brain functioning —and some of the neurocognitive deficiencies that accompany schizophrenia. 2
Is flat affect a personality trait?
It's much more than dealing with a loved one who tends to be "cold.". It's not a personality trait. This symptom of schizophrenia makes it impossible for your loved one to translate emotion into a verbal or physical expression. The brain and body are not connecting.
Can antipsychotics cause flat affect?
In addition to evaluating your medication—since some meds can cause flat affect—your mental health provider can prescribe antipsychotic medications to control symptoms of schizophrenia, including delusions and hallucinations. Typical antipsychotics function by blocking receptors for dopamine.
What is Flat Affect?
A Flat Affect is a state in which there is depletion in the expression of emotion in an individual. People with this problem lacks response to any emotion. They seem extremely constricted in expressing their feelings to others. Individuals do not lack emotions or feelings but there is a deficiency in illustrating their feelings.
Symptoms of Flat Affect
Schizophrenia is a neurological disorder, in which disrupts the normal functioning of an individual. It is clinically assessed and is a negative symptom of schizophrenia, which means there is a reduction in the expression of emotions.
Causes of Flat Affect
Individuals who have witnessed a traumatic event which developed a flat affect as a reaction to it.
Treatment of Flat Affect
Treatment of flat affect can be difficult, as it depends upon the cause which develops it, which is different for each individual. The plan should begin by consulting a therapist or psychologist, or anyone who diagnoses and treats mental health conditions. In which the expert aims to address the underlying causes of symptoms.
3. Coping
To cope with daily stress or depression can lessen the symptom of it. Coping with stress or any past traumatic event can assist in reducing it. By exercising, giving an ample amount of sleep to your body, avoiding drugs, etc., will help balance the mood.
Genral FAQs
This is a condition in which the emotions of individual experience but cannot display them physically or verbally. The time period of this symptom depends upon the severity of it. For instance, in chronic schizophrenia, where characteristics of symptoms are long-lasting, a flat affect can be long term.
What does flat affect mean?
See additional information. A flat affect is the loss or lack of emotional responses to a situation or event that would typically elicit emotion. People with flat affect may appear to be completely unemotional or apathetic. Other associated symptoms include speaking in a monotone voice and a reduction in facial expressions.
How to reduce the risk of stroke?
The risk of stroke can be reduced by controlling high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and stopping smoking.
What causes a slow gait and slow movement?
Parkinson's disease is a slowly progressive neurological disease characterized by a fixed inexpressive face, a tremor at rest, slowing of voluntary movements, a gait with short accelerating steps, peculiar posture and muscle weakness, caused by degeneration of an area of the brain called the basal ganglia, and by low production of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Most patients are over 50, but at least 10 percent are under 40.
What is flat affect?
Flat affect is a condition in which the concerned person is unable to express his emotions through facial expression, voice or bodily language. For example a normal when happy will display his emotions on his face by smiling, laughing or in any other way. But a person with flat affect will not react or show his facial, verbal or bodily expression of happiness. Flat affect is not a disease in itself but a concomitant symptom of certain psychiatric illnesses such as schizophrenia, depression, autism, brain injury, facial paralysis, medications etc. Patient affected with flat affect needs to be examined and treated by a psychiatrist.
Is flat affect a disease?
Flat affect is not a disease in itself but a condition that is linked with some other medical condition, usually a mental condition. There is an abnormal activity in the brain. The area in the brain responsible for arousal to a response is not active as it is in normal people.
Depression
A flat effect can be one of the symptoms of this mood disorder. Researchers have used movie clips to study flat affect and depression. In one small study, they found that people who are depressed reacted less to positive scenes than people with schizophrenia did. Depressed people also reacted slightly more to negative clips.
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
This brain damage can happen after a car crash, a fall, or any other injury that causes a hard hit to the head.
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
Scientists know that autism and related disorders stem partly from genetics as well as differences in the brain.
What is the best treatment for flat feet?
Your healthcare provider may recommend nonsurgical treatments if you experience foot pain, stiffness or other issues. Rarely, people need surgery to fix rigid flat feet or problems with bones or tendons. Treatments include: Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), rest and ice to ease inflammation and pain.
What is flat foot?
What are flat feet? Having flat feet, also known as flatfoot, is a condition where one or both feet have little to no arch. When you stand, the pads of the feet press into the ground. Typically, you can’t see an arch in the foot, though sometimes the arch appears when you lift the foot. All babies have flat feet at birth.
How do you know if you have flat feet?
But certain types of flatfoot can be painful. Symptoms may include: Leg cramps. Muscle pain (aching or fatigue) in the foot or leg. Pain in the arch, ankle, heel or outside of the foot. Pain when walking or changes in your gait (how you walk). Toe drift (front part of the foot and toes point outward).
When do flat feet start to form?
By age 6, arches typically form. Sometimes, flat feet (or fallen arches) appear during the teen or adult years. You may have pain and difficulty walking. If flat feet cause problems, see your healthcare provider. Certain nonsurgical treatments, such as stretching exercises and orthotics, can ease pain and inflammation.
Do babies have flat feet?
All babies have flat feet at birth. Arches typically form by age 6. About two out of 10 children still have flat feet as adults. Some adults have arches that collapse. This condition, fallen arches, is another term for flatfoot. Flat feet aren’t a problem for most people.
Can flat feet affect one foot?
It can be difficult to flex the feet up or down or move them side-to-side. Flatfoot may affect one foot or both. Adult-acquired (fallen arch): With an adult-acquired flat foot (fallen arch), the foot's arch unexpectedly drops or collapses. The fallen arch causes the foot to turn outward and can be painful.
Imaging tests
If you're having a lot of pain in your feet, your doctor may order tests such as:
Surgery
Surgery isn't done solely to correct flatfeet. However, you might have surgery for an associated problem, such as a tendon tear or rupture.
What you can do
Wear your everyday shoes to your appointment so your doctor can look at the wear patterns on the soles. Before the appointment, you might want to write answers to the following questions:
Flat Affect and Blunted Affect
This lesson's design differentiates the different types of affect that individuals may observe in other individuals. The term affect in psychology means the array of emotions an individual can show to others. Affect refers not only to facial expressions but also to the tone of voice.
Flat Affect Definition
What is flat affect? In psychology, the definition of flat affect is the observable absence of emotional reactivity in an individual. This observation includes a lack of emotion in facial expression and a monotone voice, a lack of eye contact, and a lack of body language, which expresses any emotion.
Blunted Affect Definition
What is blunted affect? In psychology, blunted affect is defined as a reduced emotional response to an environmental stimulus. Again, blunted affect and flat affect are both types of constricted affect. However, an individual with a blunted affect shows some (reduced) emotionality, whereas a flat one shows none.
