From the way we move and sleep to the way we relate to the people around us, depression changes almost everything. It is also noticeable in the way you speak and in your writing. In some cases, this “word of melancholy” can have a strong effect on others. Consider the influence of the poems and lyrics of Sylvia Plath and Kurt Cobain, who suffered from depression and committed suicide.
Scientists have long tried to pinpoint the exact link between depression and language, but technology is bringing us closer to the big picture. our new research was announced in clinical psychologyhas published a class of words that can help accurately predict if someone is suffering from depression.
Traditionally, linguistic analysis in this area has been done by researchers reading and taking notes. the current, Computer text analysis method Very large databanks can be processed in minutes. It helps identify linguistic features that humans may miss, calculating word and word class prevalence, lexical diversity, average sentence length, grammatical patterns, and many other metrics.
recently, personal essay and diary entries Works by people with depression and by famous artists such as: Coburn and plus.For spoken language, the following fragment natural language Findings in depressed patients also provided insight. Taken together, these studies reveal clear and consistent differences in the language of people with and without symptoms of depression.
content
Language can be divided into two components: content and style. Content relates to what we express, the meaning or subject of a statement. It shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that people with symptoms of depression overuse words to convey their emotions. negative emotionsspecifically negative adjectives and adverbs such as “lonely”, “sad” and “miserable”.
More interesting is the use of pronouns.used by people with symptoms of depression Significant increase in first person singular pronouns — “I”, “myself”, “me”, etc. — and fairly few Second and third person pronouns – such as “they”, “they”, or “she”. This pattern of pronoun usage suggests that people with depression are more self-focused and less connected to others.Researchers have found that pronouns are actually more reliable in identifying depression over negative emotional words.
Negative words and first person pronouns can be helpful.
we know that Rumination (obsessed with personal matters) and social isolation is a common feature of depression. However, we do not know whether these findings reflect differences in attentiveness or thinking styles. Does depression cause us to focus on ourselves, or do people who focus too much on themselves develop symptoms of depression?
style
The style of a language is about how you express yourself, not what you express. Our lab recently conducted a big data text analysis of 64 different online mental health forums, surveying over 6,400 members. “word of absolutismWords conveying absolute magnitude or probability, such as “always,” “never,” or “completely,” were found to be better markers in mental health forums than pronouns or negative emotional words. I was.
From the beginning, we predicted that depressed patients have a more black-and-white view of the world, and that would show in their language style. When compared with 19 different control forums (for example, moms net and student room), the prevalence of absolutist words is about 50% higher in the world. anxiety and depression forum and about 80% larger suicidal ideation forum.
Pronouns generated similar distribution patterns as absolutist words across forums, but with a smaller impact. In contrast, paradoxically, negative emotion language was less prevalent in suicidal ideation forums than in anxiety and depression forums.
Our study also included recovery forumwrite a positive and encouraging post about recovery from a member who feels recovered from a depressive episode. Here we see that while negative sentiment words are used to moderate the forum at similar levels, positive sentiment words increase by about 70%. Nevertheless, the prevalence of absolutist language was significantly higher than in the control group, but slightly lower than in the anxiety and depression forums.
Importantly, people who have previously experienced symptoms of depression more likely to have them again. Thus, even in the absence of current symptoms of depression, a strong propensity for absolutist thinking may play a role in triggering depressive episodes. The same effect is seen with the use of pronouns, but not with negative sentiment words.
practical meaning
Understanding the language of depression helps us understand the mindset of someone with symptoms of depression, but it also has practical implications.Researchers use automated text analysis and machine learning (a computer that can learn from experience without being programmed) Classify Different Mental Health Conditions From natural language text samples such as blog posts.
Such classification is already surpassed Made by a trained therapist. Importantly, machine learning classification only gets better as more data is provided and more sophisticated algorithms are developed. This is not only considering the broad patterns of absolutism, negativity and pronouns already described. Efforts are underway to use computers to pinpoint more specific subcategories of mental health problems, such as perfectionism, self-esteem issues, and social anxiety.
That said, it is certainly possible to use depression-related language without actually being depressed. Ultimately, it’s how you feel over time that determines whether or not you suffer.However, the World Health Organization estimates that more than 300 million people worldwide have currently living with depressionhas increased by more than 18 percent since 2005, and having more tools available to detect symptoms is certainly critical to improving health and preventing tragic suicides like those of Plath and Cobain.
This article was originally published conversation By Mohamed Al Mosaiwi, University of Reading.read Original article here.
