Study reveals changing mental health language over 79 years

Summary: A study of 340,000 texts over 79 years revealed a shift from terms like “disease” and “disturbance” to “mental health” and “psychiatric,” with “mental illness” now the most widely used term.

This development reflects a growing recognition of mental health. The findings highlight the changing language in mental health discourse. More research is needed to understand the impact of these terms on people with mental health issues.

Highlights:

1. “Mental illness” is now the most widely used term for mental health problems.
2. The use of terms like “disease” and “disruption” has declined over time.
3. The study analyzed texts from 1940 to 2019, showing the changing language regarding mental health.

Source: PLOS

A new survey of nearly 340,000 texts spanning 79 years shows that generic mental health terms have shifted away from words like “disease” and “disruption” and toward “psychiatric” and “mental health “, with “mental illness” becoming the most common term. term used.

Nick Haslam and Naomi Baes from the University of Melbourne in Australia present these findings in the new open access journal PLOS Mental Health on June 4.

The authors argue that while words such as “crazy” and “insane” are clearly stigmatizing to modern ears, mental health professionals and communities continue to struggle with other words to denote mental ill health.

But while experts and patients debate “depressed person” or “person with depression,” broader umbrella terms, such as “mental illness” itself, have not been studied.

To examine how these general terms have changed over time, Haslam and Baes analyzed two large collections of texts: Google Books and a combination of the Corpus of Historical American English and the Corpus of Contemporary American English.

The first collection contained more than a trillion words from English-language books, and the second included more than 700 million words from fiction and nonfiction books, magazines, newspapers, spoken languages, and broadcasts of TV.

For the period 1940-2019, scientists examined the popularity of 24 different umbrella terms for mental health problems.

The terms were two- or three-word expressions combining four adjectives – “mental”, “mental health”, “psychiatric” and “psychological” – with six nouns “condition”, “disease”, “disorder”, “disturbance”. », “disease” and “problem”.

Generic terms for poor mental health appeared more than twice as often in 2019 as in 1940, as psychiatry, clinical psychology and other mental health professions developed and the general public began to recognize the importance of mental health.

Phrases including “disease” and “disruption” have become less common over time. Phrases including words like “mental health,” “psychiatric” and “disease” are more commonly used.

In particular, the term “mental illness”, after a resurgence in popularity between the 1940s and 1960s, became the most widely used term. It is important to note that the authors here specifically looked at the numerical frequency of word usage in written culture, rather than community word preferences over time.

Based on these findings, the scientists suggest that further studies should focus on how the language of mental health is used by scientists and the general public, and how this language affects people suffering from it. mental health problems.

The authors add: “Our study shows that the terms people use to refer to poor mental health have evolved over the past 80 years, but that ‘mental illness’ has steadily increased to become the most popular phrase.

About this news on research in language and mental health

Author: Charlotte Bhaskar
Source: PLOS
Contact: Charlotte Bhaskar – PLOS
Picture: Image is credited to Neuroscience News

Original research: Free access.
“What should we call poor mental health? Historical Changes in the Popularity of Generic Terms” by Nick Haslam et al. PLOS Medicine

Abstract

What should we call poor mental health? Historical evolution of the popularity of generic terms

Considerable attention has been paid to the language of mental ill-health, but the generic terms used to refer to it – “mental illness”, “psychiatric condition”, “mental health problem”, etc. – have largely escaped empirical scrutiny.

We examined changes in the prevalence of alternative terms in two large corpora of English texts from 1940 to 2019.

Twenty-four terms were studied, composed of four adjectival expressions (“mental”, “mental health”, “psychiatric”, “psychological”) and six nouns (“condition”, “disease”, “disorder”, “disturbance”). “). “disease”, “problem”).

Terms including “condition,” “disease,” and “disturbance” have become less popular over time, while those involving “psychiatric,” “mental health,” and “disease” have become more popular.

Although there has been some tendency to abandon terms with medical connotations in favor of more normalizing expressions, “mental illness” consolidated its position as the dominant term during the study period.