Time sense, emotions, and acute mental illness.

Fifty psychiatric patients were evaluated for subjective and objective changes in time sense in the Emergency Department and, on the average, nine days after admission to the hospital. Unpleasant affect (anxiety, aggression, and depression) was positively correlated with changes in time sense, and changes in pleasantness were negatively correlated with changes in time sense. There was greater distortion of time sense in the E.D., when unpleasant affect was greater. Besides the pre-post correlations of time sense with emotional changes, the comparison of sub-groups showed that patients with poor reality testing (psychotic, schizophrenic, and delusional patients) had the most marked distortions of time sense. These findings suggest that, in acute mental illness, changes in time sense may be a useful index to alterations in reality testing and emotion.