People with depression use language differently - here you can find out how you recognize it

People with depression use language differently - here you can find out how you recognize it

depression penetrates every aspect of a person's existence - his actions, his sleep patterns, his interactions and even his language. Both spoken and written statements can experience noticeable changes, which creates the so -called “language of depression”. Impressive examples of this unique language can be found in the creative works of artists such as Sylvia Plath and Kurt Cobain, both of whom fought against depression and finally lost.

The transition in linguistic analyzes

Traditionally, linguistic analyzes included manual reading and making notes by researchers. The accommodation of computer -aided text analysis methods has revolutionized this process and enables the processing of huge amounts of data in just a few minutes. This fast processing can help with the recognition of linguistic characteristics that may escape the human eye, including the frequency of certain words and word categories, the lexical diversity, the set length, grammatical patterns and a variety of other metrics.

resources such as personal attachments and diary entries from people with depression and even the works of renowned artists such as Plath and Cobain have proven to be invaluable. Spoken language samples from people with depression have also provided important knowledge. The collected data indicate persistent differences in the language used by people with and without depression symptoms.

Language decrypted: Content

Language consists of two main components: content and style. The content refers to what we articulate - the essence or the topic of our statements. It is not surprising that people with depressed symptoms tend to use excessive number of negative emotion words, in particular negative adjectives and adverbs such as "lonely", "sad" or "misery".

, however, the use of pronouns is probably more fascinating.

People with depression symptoms tend to make significantly more singular pronouns of the first person such as "Me", "MySelf" and "I" and significantly fewer pronouns of the second and third person like "they", "theme" or "they". This special pronoun usage pattern indicates that people with depression tend to be more concentrated on themselves and are less connected to others. Interestingly, research has shown that pronouns can be even more reliable in the diagnosis of depression than negative emotion words.

Although it is recognized that brooding (constant thinking about personal topics) and social isolation are prevailing characteristics of depression, it is unclear whether these results reflect differences in attention or in cognitive style. Is it a depression that leads people to focus on themselves, or do self -focused people develop depressive symptoms?

understood language: style

The language style refers in the way we express ourselves and not to the content that we express. In our laboratory, a large-scale data text analysis of 64 different online forums on mental health was recently carried out with over 6,400 members. We found that "absolutist words"-words that convey absolute greats or probabilities, such as "always", "nothing" or "completely"-more effective indicators of mental health are than pronouns or negative emotion words.

We put up the theory that people with depression would perceive the world in strong black and white terms, which would be reflected in their language style. Compared to 19 different control forums (such as Mumsnet and Studentroom), the use of absolutist words in forums for anxiety and depression was about 50 % higher and in forums that focused on suicide thoughts, about 80 % higher.

The distribution of the pronouns reflected the pattern of absolutist words in the forums, albeit to a lesser extent. Conversely, negative emotion words in forums were strangely widespread for thoughts of suicide than in forums on anxiety and depression.

The study also examined recovery forums in which members who believe that they have recovered from a depressed episode share hopeful and calming contributions about their trip. In these forums, the use of negative emotion words was similar to control forums, while positive emotion words increased by about 70 %. However, the occurrence of absolutist words was still significantly higher than in control forums, albeit slightly lower than in fear and depression forums.

It is important that people who have previously shown depressive symptoms tend to experience them again more often. Their persistent tendency towards absolutist thinking, even if they currently do not show any symptoms of depression, therefore indicates that this could contribute to triggering depressive episodes. A similar trend was observed in the use of pronouns, but not with words with negative emotions.

Is my dog ​​depressed?

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Is my dog ​​depressed?

practical importance

The understanding of the language of depression can provide information about the thinking patterns of people with depressive symptoms. It also has practical importance. Researchers combine automated text analysis with machine learning (AI systems that learn from experiences without being programmed manually) in order to classify different mental health states based on text samples in natural language, for example blog posts.

This innovative approach to language analysis has shown great potential in diagnosing depression and exceeds self -trained therapists in accordance with accuracy. It is crucial that the efficiency of classification through machine learning is expected to increase if more data is provided and more sophisticated algorithms are developed. This goes beyond the identification of general patterns of absolutism, negativity and pronouns. Efforts are made to identify more and more specific subcategories of mental health problems with the help of AI - such as perfectionism, problems with self -esteem and social fears.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. You can find comprehensive information in the following resources:

• University Reading
• profile of Mohammed al-Mosaiwi
• Who: Management of depression
• Linguistic features of depressive symptoms
• Automated text analysis and mental health

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