A 33-year-old man smiles broadly while describing being made redundant from his job of fifteen years and losing his flat shortly afterward. When his clinician comments gently that this sounds like it must have been very difficult, he continues smiling and seems unsure why she said that. Before revealing the answer: what is this finding, and how would you document it precisely rather than just noting it as 'odd'?
This is incongruity of affect. Rather than simply noting 'odd affect,' document the specific mismatch: the emotion displayed (smiling, apparent cheerfulness) against the specific content it was paired with (redundancy and losing his home), plus the observation that he showed no awareness of the mismatch when it was pointed out. A concrete, content-linked description like this is far more useful to a colleague than a vague general label.
References
- Casey, P. & Kelly, B. (2019). Fish's Clinical Psychopathology, 4th ed. Ch. 6, 'Disorders of Emotion'.