Depressed people ‘feel gray, not blue'

In the open access journal BMC Medical Research Methodology, boffins have described the development of a color chart, The Manchester Color Wheel. The chart can be used to study people’s preferred pigment in relation to their state of mind.

To create an instrument that would allow people a choice of colours in response to questions, Peter Whorwell, Professor of Medicine and Gastroenterology at University Hospital South Manchester, worked with a team of researchers from the University of Manchester, UK.

He said, "Colours are frequently used to describe emotions, such as being ‘green with envy’ or ‘in the blues’. Although there is a large, often anecdotal, literature on colour preferences and the relationship of colour to mood and emotion, there has been relatively little serious research on the subject.”

The researchers created a wheel of colors of various intensities, including shades of gray. They then asked a control group of non-anxious, non-depressed people to describe which color they felt most ‘drawn to’, which was their favourite and whether any of the colours represented their current mood. When the test was repeated with anxious and depressed people, most chose the same ‘drawn to’ colour as the healthy participants, yellow, and the same favorite colour, blue. When asked which color represented their mood, however, most chose gray, unlike the healthy subjects who tended to pick a shade of yellow.

A separate group of healthy volunteers were also asked whether they associated any of the colours with positive or negative moods.

According to Whorwell, "When we used these results to separate colours into positive, negative and neutral groups, we found that depressed individuals showed a striking preference for negative colours compared to healthy controls. Anxious individuals gave results intermediate to those observed in depression, with negative colours being chosen more frequently as well as positive colours being chosen less frequently than in the control test.” ANI