People with depression use language differently - here's how to recognize it

People with depression use language differently - here's how to recognize it

Depression permeates every aspect of a person's existence - their actions, their sleep patterns, their interactions, and even their speech. Both spoken and written expressions can undergo noticeable changes, creating what is known as the “language of depression.” Powerful examples of this unique language can be found in the creative works of artists such as Sylvia Plath and Kurt Cobain, both of whom battled and eventually lost depression.

Over the years, researchers have attempted to unravel the complicated connection between depression and language. Thanks to advanced technologies, we are steadily moving closer to a comprehensive understanding. A groundbreaking study published in Clinical Psychological Science has discovered a specific set of words that can accurately indicate whether someone is living with depression.

The transition in linguistic analysis

Traditionally, linguistic analysis involved manual reading and note-taking by researchers. The advent of computer-aided text analysis methods has revolutionized this process, allowing huge amounts of data to be processed in just a few minutes. This rapid processing can help detect linguistic features that may be missed by the human eye, including the frequency of certain words and word categories, lexical diversity, sentence length, grammatical patterns, and a variety of other metrics.

Resources such as personal essays and diary entries from people with depression and even the works of renowned artists such as Plath and Cobain have proven invaluable. Spoken language samples from people with depression have also provided important insights. The data collected suggests persistent differences in the language used by those with and without symptoms of depression.

Language decoded: content

Language consists of two main components: content and style. Content refers to what we articulate – the essence or theme of our statements. Not surprisingly, people with depressive symptoms tend to use excessive negative emotion words, particularly negative adjectives and adverbs such as “lonely,” “sad,” or “miserable.”

However, the use of pronouns is arguably more intriguing.

People with depression symptoms tend to use significantly more first-person singular pronouns such as “me,” “myself,” and “I” and significantly fewer second- and third-person pronouns such as “they,” “them,” or “her.” This particular pronoun usage pattern suggests that people with depression tend to be more self-focused and less connected to others. Interestingly, research has shown that pronouns can be even more reliable than negative emotion words in diagnosing depression.

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

Understood language: style

Language style refers to the way we express ourselves, rather than the content we express. Our lab recently conducted a large-scale data text analysis of 64 different online mental health forums with over 6,400 members. We found that “absolutist words”—words that convey absolute magnitudes or probabilities, such as “always,” “nothing,” or “completely”—are more effective indicators of mental health than pronouns or negative emotion words.

We theorized that people with depression would perceive the world in very black and white terms, which would be reflected in their language style. Compared to 19 different control forums (such as Mumsnet and StudentRoom), use of absolutist words was about 50% higher in forums focused on anxiety and depression and about 80% higher in forums focused on suicidal ideation.

The distribution of pronouns reflected the pattern of absolutist words in the forums, although to a lesser extent. Conversely, negative emotion words were strangely less common in forums about suicidal ideation than in forums about anxiety and depression.

The study also examined recovery forums, where members who believe they have recovered from a depressive episode share hopeful and reassuring posts about their journey. 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, although slightly lower than in anxiety and depression forums.

Importantly, people who have previously exhibited depressive symptoms are more likely to experience them again. Therefore, their persistent tendency to absolutist thinking, even when they are not currently showing symptoms of depression, suggests that this may contribute to the triggering of depressive episodes. A similar trend was observed with the use of pronouns, but not with words containing negative emotions.

Is my dog ​​depressed?

Please enable JavaScript

Is my dog ​​depressed?

Practical significance

Understanding the language of depression can shed light on the thought patterns of people with depressive symptoms. It also has practical significance. Researchers combine automated text analysis with machine learning (AI systems that learn from experience without being manually programmed) to classify different mental health conditions based on samples of natural language text, such as blog posts.

This innovative approach to speech analysis has shown great potential in diagnosing depression, surpassing even trained therapists in accuracy. Crucially, the efficiency of machine learning classification is expected to increase as more data is provided and more sophisticated algorithms are developed. This goes beyond identifying general patterns of absolutism, negativity, and pronouns. Efforts are being made to use AI to identify increasingly specific subcategories of mental health problems – such as perfectionism, self-esteem issues and social anxiety.

However, it is worth noting that it is possible to use depressive expressions without actually being depressed. Ultimately, it is the persistence of certain feelings over time that determines whether you suffer. With the World Health Organization estimating that more than 300 million people worldwide are living with depression, an increase of over 18% since 2005, developing more tools to detect the condition could significantly help improve health outcomes and prevent tragic suicides like those of Plath and Cobain.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. For more comprehensive information, see the following resources:

• Universität Reading
• Profil von Mohammed Al-Mosaiwi
• WHO: Management von Depressionen
• Sprachliche Merkmale depressiver Symptome
• Automatisierte Textanalyse und psychische Gesundheit

Sources: