Linguistic Markers in Individuals With Symptoms of Depression in Bi-Multilingual Context

Abstract

Depression has been identified as the most prevalent mental disorder worldwide. Due to the stigma of mental illness, the population remains unidentified, undiagnosed, and untreated. Various studies have been carried out to detect and track depression following symptoms of dichotomous thinking, absolutist thinking, linguistic markers, and linguistic behavior. However, there is little study focused on the linguistic behavior of bilingual and multilingual with anxiety and depression. This chapter aims to identify the bi-multilingual linguistic markers by analyzing the recorded verbal content of depressive discourse resulting from life situations and stressors causing anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. Different contextual domains of word usage, content words, function words (pronouns), and negative valance words have been identified as indicators of psychological process affecting cognitive behavior, emotional health, and mental illness. These findings are discussed within the framework of Beck's model of depression to support the linguistic connection to mental illness-depression.

Linguistic features and psychological states: A machine-learning based approach

“…In terms of absolutist words, previous studies found that they are negatively related to mental health (Al-Mosaiwi and Johnstone, 2018). The reason is that absolutist words are associated with absolutist thinking, which is unhealthy and inflexible and may do harm to mental health (Savekar et al, 2019). Hence, people with absolutist thinking are prone to anger and self-blame (Antoniou et al, 2017), and more prone to mental disorders (Jones et al, 2020).…”

“…Second, the role of absolutist words (e.g., always, complete, completely) signals a sense of absolutist thinking and effective in identifying mental disorders (Al-Mosaiwi and Johnstone, 2018). Absolutist thinking, as defined by Ostell (1992), is a categorical and evaluative thinking style related to cognitive distortion and irrational beliefs (Savekar et al, 2019). Specifically, it reflects greater certainty, extreme and rigid insistence, and dichotomous thinking in the way people articulate their beliefs (Jones et al, 2020).…”

“…Empirical studies have revealed that the absolutist thinking may cause difficulty in problem-solving, promote dysfunctional emotional states, and do harm to mental health (Jones et al, 2020). For example, absolutist people are less pleasant in their job experience due to their perfectionism (Savekar et al, 2019). Besides, absolutist people are prone to victimization, self-blame, and anger when being criticized or opposed (Jones et al, 2020).…”