Sadness

Sadness is an emotional pain associated with, or characterized by, feelings of disadvantage, loss, despair, grief, helplessness, disappointment and sorrow.

[12] According to the American Journal of Psychiatry, sadness has been found to be associated with "increases in bilateral activity within the vicinity of the middle and posterior temporal cortex, lateral cerebellum, cerebellar vermis, midbrain, putamen, and caudate.

Some coping mechanisms include: getting social support and/or spending time with a pet,[23] creating a list, or engaging in some activity to express sadness.

[citation needed] While being one of the moods people most want to shake, sadness can sometimes be perpetuated by the very coping strategies chosen, such as ruminating, "drowning one's sorrows", or permanently isolating oneself.

[2]: 69–70  As alternative ways of coping with sadness to the above, cognitive behavioral therapy suggests instead either challenging one's negative thoughts, or scheduling some positive event as a distraction.

[28] In disorders such as autism and psychopathy, facial expressions that represent sadness may be subtle, which may show a need for a more non-linguistic situation to affect their level of empathy.

[28] According to DIPR scientist Swati Johar,[29]: VII  sadness is an emotion "identified by current speech dialogue and processing systems".

[29]: 12  Measurements to distinguish sadness from other emotions in the human voice include root mean square (RMS) energy, inter-word silence and speaking rate.

[31][32] Johar argues that, "when someone is sad, slow, low pitched speech with weak high audio frequency energy is produced".

[36] Julia Kristeva considered that "a diversification of moods, variety in sadness, refinement in sorrow or mourning are the imprint of a humanity that is surely not triumphant but subtle, ready to fight and creative".