Determining the Intensity of Basic Emotions among People Suffering from Anorexia Nervosa Based on Free Statements about Their Body

Agnieszka Różańska,Stella Maćkowska,Dominik Spinczyk,Klaudia Barańska,Katarzyna Rojewska

doi:10.3390/electronics11010138

Abstract

Objective: This study sought to address one of the challenges of psychiatry-computer aided diagnosis and therapy of anorexia nervosa. The goal of the paper is to present a method of determining the intensity of five emotions (happiness, sadness, anxiety, anger and disgust) in medical notes, which was then used to analyze the feelings of people suffering from anorexia nervosa. In total, 96 notes were researched (46 from people suffering from anorexia and 52 from healthy people). Method: The developed solution allows a comprehensive assessment of the intensity of five feelings (happiness, sadness, anxiety, anger and disgust) occurring in text notes. This method implements Nencki Affective Word List dictionary extension, in which the original version has a limited vocabulary. The method was tested on a group of patients suffering from anorexia nervosa and a control group (healthy people without an eating disorder). Of the analyzed medical, only 8% of the words are in the original dictionary. Results: As a result of the study, two emotional profiles were obtained: one pattern for a healthy person and one for a person suffering from anorexia nervosa. Comparing the average emotional intensity in profiles of a healthy person and person with a disorder, a higher value of happiness intensity is noticeable in the profile of a healthy person than in the profile of a person with an illness. The opposite situation occurs with other emotions (sadness, anxiety, disgust, anger); they reach higher values in the case of the profile of a person suffering from anorexia nervosa. Discussion: The presented method can be used when observing the patient’s progress during applied therapy. It allows us to state whether the chosen method has a positive effect on the mental state of the patient, and if his emotional profile is similar to the emotional profile of a healthy person. The method can also be used during first diagnosis visit.

Highlights

Diagnostics and medical therapy should consider as much information as possible about the patient, contributing to its effectiveness
Assessment of Emotions with the Use of an Extended Dictionary According to previously selected groups, we chose the profiles most suited to the person suffering from anorexia
The study used the extension to the Nencki Affective Word List (NAWL) dictionary for better determining the five basic emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, anxiety and disgust in texts

Summary

Introduction

Diagnostics and medical therapy should consider as much information as possible about the patient, contributing to its effectiveness. Due to the fact that the main perceptual channel of humans is the vision system, in medicine, we mainly use image data. We encounter a number of vision systems that are used in medicine: systems using medical image contrast enhancement [1], image processing systems of various modalities supporting the therapy of various diseases [2] or systems supporting the early detection of diseases using categorization algorithms as screening methods [3]. We independently deal with phenomena modeling systems using computer methods [4]. The proposed work belongs to the class of screening and auxiliary methods of computer-aided therapeutic diagnosis of anorexia, whereby it uses a different type-text data

Methods

Results

Conclusion