People With Depression Use Language Differently – Here’s How To Spot It

Depression permeates every facet of a person’s existence – their actions, their sleep patterns, their interactions, and even their language. Both spoken and written expressions may undergo noticeable transformations, birthing what has been termed the “language of depression”. Powerful illustrations of this unique language can be found in the creative works of artists such as Sylvia Plath and Kurt Cobain, both of whom fought and ultimately lost their battles with depression.

Over the years, researchers have endeavored to elucidate the intricate relationship between depression and language. Thanks to advanced technologies, we are steadily inching towards a comprehensive understanding. A breakthrough study, published in Clinical Psychological Science, has discovered a particular set of words that can accurately indicate if someone is living with depression.

The Transition in Linguistic Analyses

Traditionally, linguistic analyses involved researchers manually reading and taking notes. The emergence of computerized text analysis methods has revolutionized this process, enabling the processing of vast amounts of data in mere minutes. This rapid processing can aid in the detection of linguistic traits that might escape the human eye, including the frequency of certain words and categories of words, lexical diversity, sentence length, grammatical patterns, and a host of other metrics.

Resources such as personal essays and diary entries by individuals living with depression, and even the works of acclaimed artists like Plath and Cobain, have proven to be invaluable. Spoken language samples from individuals with depression have also provided significant insights. The amassed data points towards consistent disparities in the language used by individuals with and without depression symptoms.

Language Decoded: Content

Language comprises two primary components: content and style. Content pertains to what we articulate – the essence, or topic of our statements. It is unsurprising that those displaying depressive symptoms tend to use an overabundance of negative emotion words, especially negative adjectives and adverbs, like “lonely”, “sad”, or “miserable”.

However, the usage of pronouns is arguably more intriguing.

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

Although it’s acknowledged that rumination (continuous thoughts about personal issues) and social isolation are prevalent traits of depression, it’s unclear whether these findings mirror differences in attention or cognitive style. Is it depression that leads people to be self-focused, or do self-focused individuals develop depressive symptoms?

Language Understood: Style

Language style pertains to the manner in which we express ourselves, rather than the content we express. A recent large-scale data text analysis of 64 different online mental health forums, encompassing over 6,400 members, was conducted in our lab. We found that “absolutist words” – words that communicate absolute magnitudes or probabilities, such as “always”, “nothing”, or “completely” – were more effective mental health markers than either pronouns or negative emotion words.

We theorized that those with depression would perceive the world in starkly black and white terms, which would be evident in their language style. Compared to 19 different control forums (like Mumsnet and StudentRoom), the usage of absolutist words was approximately 50% higher in anxiety and depression forums, and roughly 80% higher in forums focusing on suicidal ideation.

The distribution of pronouns mirrored the pattern of absolutist words across the forums, though to a lesser degree. Conversely, negative emotion words were curiously less prevalent in suicidal ideation forums than in anxiety and depression forums.

The study also explored 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 usage of negative emotion words was similar to control forums, while positive emotion words were increased by approximately 70%. However, the occurrence of absolutist words was still significantly higher than control forums, though marginally lower than in anxiety and depression forums.

Importantly, individuals who have previously exhibited depressive symptoms are more prone to experience them again. Therefore, their continued propensity towards absolutist thinking, even when they’re currently not showing symptoms of depression, suggests it may contribute to triggering depressive episodes. A similar trend was observed with pronoun usage, but not for negative emotion words.

Practical Significance

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

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

However, it’s worth noting that it’s possible to use depression-associated language without actually being depressed. Ultimately, it’s the persistence of certain feelings over time that determines whether you are suffering. Given that the World Health Organisation estimates 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 aid in improving health outcomes and preventing tragic suicides like those of Plath and Cobain.

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