ABSTRACT
Crying as a form of emotional expressive behavior is thought to be unique to human beings (Frey et al., 1983). It is a dramatic behavior which has traditionally been associated with mood changes, most commonly low mood, but also with happiness, as seen in the contrasting idioms of “crying one’s heart out” and “tears of joy.” It is not surprising, then, that this behavior has been thought to be a feature of psychiatric disorders, in particular, mood disorders. The supposed relationship between crying and psychiatric disorder was alluded to by Darwin, who noted that “the insane notoriously give way to all their emotions with little or no restraint…nothing is more characteristic of simple melancholia, even in the male sex, than a tendency to weep on the slightest occasions, or from no cause” (Darwin, 1872/1965, pp. 154–155). This chapter will first review the contemporary research literature on the relationship of crying and mood in both nonclinical and clinical samples, and will briefly cover pathological crying (which is more extensively described in chapter 15). Next, it will consider the putative mechanisms which may serve to explain the relationship between mood and crying behavior, and the role of crying as a sign of psychiatric disorder in current psychiatric nosologies. The remainder of the chapter will then be used to examine two questions. First, what is the evidence that crying is associated with mood disorders or any other “functional” psychiatric disorder?; and second, what is the relevance of the syndrome of “emotionalism” or pathological crying to our understanding of the association between crying and mood disorder?
