Suicidal risk and characteristics of text written by patients with endogenous mental disorders

Abstract

Aim. Identification of the relationship between suicidal risk and features of the text written by patients with endogenous mental diseases.
 Methods. The study involved 58 people-patients with endogenous mental diseases who were being treated at the MHRC clinic. All patients were asked to write an essay on the topic I, others, the world. To analyze the semantic and syntactic structure of utterances, the method of relational-situational analysis and the method of frequency lexical analysis using the PLATIn analyzer were used. All patients completed the following methods: (1) SCL-90-R symptomatic questionnaire (Symptom Check List-90-Revised); (2) the Iowa game problem the expectation-result model of Expectancy-valence is used, which introduces parameters for probabilistic modeling of decision-making: attention to win-loss, learning-forgetting, impulsivitydeterminism; (3) The Barratt impulsivity scale [10]; (4) the five-factor personality questionnaire, the BassPerry questionnaire.
 Results. The results of the Spearman correlation analysis showed statistically significant correlations between the severity of suicide risk (from the SCL-90 questionnaire) and the parameters of texts obtained using computer analysis, with the parameters of the Expectation-valence model of the Iowa game problem, the Barratt impulsivity scale, the BassPerry questionnaire, and emotionality in the five-factor personality questionnaire.
 Conclusions. There were found the features of the text that are associated with increased suicide risk: increased use of past tense verbs in texts; higher productivity increase in the number of sentences and words in the text while reducing the length of the words and decrease of the number of infinitives; the increase in the coefficient of Trager; reduced vocabulary positive rational assessment and mental activities; increase vocabulary of asthenic negative emotions. The analysis of the relationship between suicidal risk and personal characteristics revealed characteristics similar to those shown in the texts: a high level of hostility, increased emotionality, increased impulsivity and a pronounced momentary effect.