Metaphor Production by Patients with Schizophrenia – A Case Analysis

Despot, Kristina Štrkalj; Sović, Martina Sekulić; Vilibić, Maja; Mímica, Ninoslav

doi:10.1080/10926488.2021.1893606

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Second, the great use of metaphors might be seen as another linguistic mechanism reflecting attempts to elaborate on the experience of PR. The high occurrence of metaphors is noteworthy per se, as it seems to point to a preserved expressive ability 60 , in contrast with the largely documented difficulties in figurative language understanding, especially in schizophrenia 61,62 . Studies in the psychoanalytic framework have argued that metaphor represents an advanced mode of holding traumatic memories in a way that allows for transformation and healing, converting the traumatic lacuna into a creative force 63 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Physical restraint in psychiatric settings: A novel characterization of the patient's experience via a linguistic, sentiment, and metaphor analysis

Nichini,

Barattieri di San Pietro,

Scalingi

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Physical Restraint (PR) is a coercive procedure used in emergency psychiatric care to ensure safety in life-threatening situations. Because of its traumatic nature, studies emphasize the importance of considering the patient's subjective experience, till now mostly limited to qualitative approaches. We pursued this aim by innovatively applying a multilayered semiautomated language analysis to a corpus of narratives about PR collected from 99 individuals across seven mental health services in Italy. Compared to a reference corpus, PR narratives were characterized by reduced fluency and lexical density, yet a greater use of emotional and cognitive terms, verbs, and first-person singular pronouns. Sadness was the most represented emotion, followed by anger and fear. One-third of the PR narratives contained at least one metaphor, with Animals and War/Prison as the most distinctive source domains. The quality and length of the PR experience impacted both the structure and sentiment of the narratives.Findings confirm the distressful nature of PR but also point to the use of various linguistic mechanisms which might serve as an early adaptive response toward healing from the traumatic experience. Overall, the study highlights the importance of Natural Language Processing as an unobtrusive window into subjective experience, offering insights for therapeutic choices.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Physical restraint in psychiatric settings: A novel characterization of the patient's experience via a linguistic, sentiment, and metaphor analysis

Nichini,

Barattieri di San Pietro,

Scalingi

et al. 2024

Preprint

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“…Clinical specialties, such as nursing, psychiatry, and oncology, are beginning to reap the valuable benefits of metaphorical imagery which helps create a visual depiction of what is being described by patients. Recent published studies in healthcare identifying metaphors patients use have focused on persons with schizophrenia (Despot et al, 2021), general depression (Coll-Florit et al, 2021), and cancer (Gustafsson et al, 2020). Conti et al (2016) warned clinicians that we may fail patients if we rely on standard medical metaphors for treatment choices.…”

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confidence: 99%

Postpartum Mood and Anxiety Disorders: A Lexicon of Metaphors

Beck¹

2022

J Holist Nurs

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Undiagnosed and untreated postpartum mental health disorders represent a silent health crisis. The aim of this paper was to develop a lexicon of metaphors women use to describe their postpartum mood and anxiety disorders to assist holistic nurses in recognizing as early as possible these struggling mothers. Mothers may not know the medical terminology to articulate their mental health problems and may turn to using metaphors. The metaphors included in this lexicon were obtained from the author's earlier qualitative studies of metaphors women used to describe their experiences of postpartum depression, postpartum panic disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder due to traumatic childbirth. In this lexicon these metaphors are organized by these three mental health disorders and includes a table of definitions of each metaphor along with examples of the context of the metaphors represented by quotes from the mothers. Metaphors can be keys that open and unlock doors that stand between holistic nurses and their patients. Being attentive to metaphorical language women use to describe how they are feeling after giving birth can be an innovative approach holistic nurses can use to identify these vulnerable women and provide an opportunity to nurture and empower new mothers.

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Early acquisition of figurative meanings in polysemous nouns and verbs

Horvat,

Štrkalj Despot,

Hržica

2024

Lang. cogn.

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Early research on the first language acquisition of figurative language indicated that figurative language comprehension and production skills develop relatively late, while recent studies contest this view. This study explores early production of metaphorical (e.g., shark meaning a rapacious crafty person) and metonymic (e.g., house meaning an organisation) meanings in English polysemous nouns and verbs by using the Braunwald corpus, which tracks a single child’s speech from the age of 1 year, 5 months to 7 years. We explore the initial production of these meanings, with respect to the age, order of acquisition and part of speech (noun vs. verb). Our study shows that children start using figurative meanings at a much earlier age than previously thought. In this early stage, metonymic meanings emerge earlier, while metaphorical meanings come a few months later. These findings challenge prior beliefs that children only develop figurative language skills at 3 years of age and show that it is not only the pre-figurative skills that develop early but also the production of very conventional types of figurative meaning, which might not necessarily require the completed development of the complex set of cognitive skills necessary for cross-domain comparison.

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Metaphor Production by Patients with Schizophrenia – A Case Analysis

Cited by 4 publications

References 47 publications

Physical restraint in psychiatric settings: A novel characterization of the patient's experience via a linguistic, sentiment, and metaphor analysis

Physical restraint in psychiatric settings: A novel characterization of the patient's experience via a linguistic, sentiment, and metaphor analysis

Postpartum Mood and Anxiety Disorders: A Lexicon of Metaphors

Early acquisition of figurative meanings in polysemous nouns and verbs

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