Describing a critical life event and its psychological consequences: The type of language used by patients suffering from depression and its relationship with personality development

Information on personality development (and its linguistic predictors) in the aftermath of a critical life event among depressive patients is relatively limited. The study's aim was to verify two hypotheses: (1) Participants with depression will use concrete rather than abstract language to describe their most recent critical life event and its psychological consequences and (2) The more abstract the language used, the higher the level of personality development. 16 Cognitive Behavioral Therapy patients suffering from depression participated in the study (M = 34 years old;SD = 4.02). Their level of personality development was assessed qualitatively by two independent coders. The coding system was based on the Positive Disintegration Theory (Dabrowski1964). We used typology from the Linguistic Category Model (Semin and Fiedler1991) to analyse the level of abstractness vs. concreteness. Depressed patients were classified as either abstract language speakers or concrete language speakers. There were equal numbers of both types of speakers. Moreover participants consistently used one type of language, regardless of whether they were describing the critical life event itself or its psychological consequences. As expected, using higher levels of language abstractness when speaking correlated with possessing higher levels of personality development. Our findings provide practitioners with useful knowledge on the benefits of using abstract language to improve supportive strategies when dealing with people in crisis and modify the psychotherapeutic protocols used to treat depression.

Automated summary

Information on personality development and its linguistic predictors among depressive patients after a critical life event is limited. This study aimed to verify two hypotheses: (1) Depressed individuals tend to use concrete language to describe their recent critical life event and its psychological consequences, and (2) The higher the level of abstract language used, the higher the level of personality development. The results showed that depressed patients preferred using concrete language, and higher levels of language abstractness were associated with higher levels of personality development.