I think we already know that people with depression use more negative emotion words. We/they also use more first person pronouns, ruminate more about issues, and so much more. This is a detailed article about the communication style of people with depression. Very interesting.

http://theconversation.com/people-with-depression-use-language-differently-heres-how-to-spot-it-90877

Mohammed Al-Mosaiwi



Kurt Cobain’s song lyrics were loved by many. Maia Valenzuela/Flickr, CC BY-SA

From the way you move and sleep, to how you interact with people around you, depression changes just about everything. It is even noticeable in the way you speak and express yourself in writing. Sometimes this “language of depression” can have a powerful effect on others. Just consider the impact of the poetry and song lyrics of Sylvia Plath and Kurt Cobain, who both killed themselves after suffering from depression.

Scientists have long tried to pin down the exact relationship between depression and language, and technology is helping us get closer to a full picture. Our new study, published in Clinical Psychological Science, has now unveiled a class of words that can help accurately predict whether someone is suffering from depression.

Traditionally, linguistic analyses in this field have been carried out by researchers reading and taking notes. Nowadays, computerised text analysis methods allow the processing of extremely large data banks in minutes. This can help spot linguistic features which humans may miss, calculating the percentage prevalence of words and classes of words, lexical diversity, average sentence length, grammatical patterns and many other metrics.

So far, personal essays and diary entries by depressed people have been useful, as has the work of well-known artists such as Cobain and Plath. For the spoken word, snippets of natural language of people with depression have also provided insight. Taken together, the findings from such research reveal clear and consistent differences in language between those with and without symptoms of depression.

Content

Language can be separated into two components: content and style. The content relates to what we express – that is, the meaning or subject matter of statements. It will surprise no one to learn that those with symptoms of depression use an excessive amount of words conveying negative emotions, specifically negative adjectives and adverbs – such as “lonely”, “sad” or “miserable”.

More interesting is the use of pronouns. Those with symptoms of depression use significantly more first person singular pronouns – such as “me”, “myself” and “I” – and significantly fewer second and third person pronouns – such as “they”, “them” or “she”. This pattern of pronoun use suggests people with depression are more focused on themselves, and less connected with others. Researchers have reported that pronouns are actually more reliable in identifying depression than negative emotion words.

Negative words and first person pronouns can give a clue. hikrcn/Shutterstock

We know that rumination (dwelling on personal problems) and social isolation are common features of depression. However, we don’t know whether these findings reflect differences in attention or thinking style. Does depression cause people to focus on themselves, or do people who focus on themselves get symptoms of depression?

Style

The style of language relates to how we express ourselves, rather than the content we express. Our lab recently conducted a big data text analysis of 64 different online mental health forums, examining over 6,400 members. “Absolutist words” – which convey absolute magnitudes or probabilities, such as “always”, “nothing” or “completely” – were found to be better markers for mental health forums than either pronouns or negative emotion words.

From the outset, we predicted that those with depression will have a more black and white view of the world, and that this would manifest in their style of language. Compared to 19 different control forums (for example, Mumsnet and StudentRoom), the prevalence of absolutist words is approximately 50% greater in anxiety and depression forums, and approximately 80% greater for suicidal ideation forums.

Pronouns produced a similar distributional pattern as absolutist words across the forums, but the effect was smaller. By contrast, negative emotion words were paradoxically less prevalent in suicidal ideation forums than in anxiety and depression forums.

Our research also included recovery forums, where members who feel they have recovered from a depressive episode write positive and encouraging posts about their recovery. Here we found that negative emotion words were used at comparable levels to control forums, while positive emotion words were elevated by approximately 70%. Nevertheless, the prevalence of absolutist words remained significantly greater than that of controls, but slightly lower than in anxiety and depression forums.

Crucially, those who have previously had depressive symptoms are more likely to have them again. Therefore, their greater tendency for absolutist thinking, even when there are currently no symptoms of depression, is a sign that it may play a role in causing depressive episodes. The same effect is seen in use of pronouns, but not for negative emotion words.

Practical implications

Understanding the language of depression can help us understand the way those with symptoms of depression think, but it also has practical implications. Researchers are combining automated text analysis with machine learning (computers that can learn from experience without being programmed) to classify a variety of mental health conditions from natural language text samples such as blog posts.

Language analysis can help diagnose depression. Dmytro Zinkevych/Shutterstock

Such classification is already outperforming that made by trained therapists. Importantly, machine learning classification will only improve as more data is provided and more sophisticated algorithms are developed. This goes beyond looking at the broad patterns of absolutism, negativity and pronouns already discussed. Work has begun on using computers to accurately identify increasingly specific subcategories of mental health problems – such as perfectionism, self-esteem problems and social anxiety.

That said, it is of course possible to use a language associated with depression without actually being depressed. Ultimately, it is how you feel over time that determines whether you are suffering. But as the World Health Organisation estimates that more than 300m people worldwide are now living with depression, an increase of more than 18% since 2005, having more tools available to spot the condition is certainly important to improve health and prevent tragic suicides such as those of Plath and Cobain.

Just found this list of top 100 blogs for people with bipolar disorder. Bipolar1blog is number 11 on the list!

Not only is this a pretty exhaustive list, but I am truly honored and happy to be on this list. Thank you so much to the compilers.

https://blog.feedspot.com/bipolar_disorder_blogs/

Brilliant video by Will Smith. This is truer than true. Even though it’s not someone’s fault that they were abused as a child, it’s still their responsibility to take that pain and hurt and suffering and do something with it so they can have a life full of love and laughter and constructiveness. If they continue to play the role of the victim, and believe me I know that any child who is pummeled into a bloody mess is a victim, but if this victimhood is kept alive, then the person will never take responsibility for their own life and move forward. Moving forward can also involve forgiveness, forgiveness can also take away victimhood. Instead of constantly living with hatred and anger, if you forgive your abuser, it can take away their power! You don’t need to be angry, hateful, negative because you’ve already forgiven them. And forgiveness is not for them, it’s for your own self, to get you out of the cycle of remaining a victim, anger, hatred and fear. Yes fear is at the crux of all the negative emotions. So if you can forgive, and take responsibility for your self, you can invite love and purpose and happiness into your heart.

Anyway, just watch the video, it’s brilliant!

Brain science suggests “mind wandering” can help manage anxiety – Harvard Health Blog – Harvard Health Publishing

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/a-different-way-to-manage-anxiety-evidence-from-brain-science-2016111710659

Dear https://myloudbipolarwhispers.com Thank you so much for putting bipolar1blog.com on your list of bipolar survivors! I am so honored!

https://myloudbipolarwhispers.com/awesome-survivor-blogs/

Thank you Kitt O’Malley (kittomalley.com) for tweeting this.

This is horrifying, any hits to the head can cause chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE. The hits don’t have to cause concussions, any hits to the head can cause damage which may or may not be evident immediately.

Football coaches of young kids who play football should read this article as well as NFL players, coaches, and officials. These debilitating, often invisible at first, and sometimes deadly injuries really need to be checked. A sport should not cause the death of its players. 😢😢

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-cte-head-hits-20180118-story,amp.html?__twitter_impression=true

So, this winter, I didn’t really go through my yearly and very dreaded hypomanic phase. It’s been quite a miracle, and for this I am endlessly grateful. The reason was medication of course. A combination of Lithium and Seroquel. Although I am a little sluggish and my muscles ache a little bit, the yearly being out of touch with reality didn’t happen! The Daily emotional breakdowns did not happen. The being totally dysfunctional did NOT happen.

Anxiety still happened but those other things did not!

Amazing what the right dose and combination of meds can do!

So for me, winter in my manic mood and summer is my depressed mood, exactly the opposite of seasonal affective disorder. So I am moving towards depression now. However, I am hoping that since the hypomanic mood didn’t really occur, neither will the depressed mood. As we all know, the intensity of mania in one direction is matched by how intense the depression will be in the other direction.

Oh I have s bit of a pitchy stomach from Seroquel, but nothing that a rigorous ab regimen won’t take care of.

All in all, it’s been an unbelievably stable winter! I can’t tolerate too many meds but these two, Lithium and Seroquel, that I can tolerate are mega bosses.

Hoping for stable moods, happiness and love in the lives of all who visit here and even all who don’t.

💕🙏💐🙏💐💕

This is quite fascinating! Hmmm I’m going to try and see about my allergies which I developed when I moved out of Buffalo. Interesting, very interesting!

https://www.bphope.com/blog/could-emotions-trigger-allergies/

The intense emotions associated with bipolar may cause allergies to flare up.  Pinpointing a traumatic experience and talking it out may help.

Photo: PeopleImages/Getty Images

By Lynn Rae

For this blog post, I am going to take you back in time to the 1970s.  I am going to show you that allergies are really our emotions in disguise, in my experience.

I was a teenager.  I rebelled against authority, but only in small ways.  My mother still ruled and I was afraid of her wrath if I did anything wrong.  Smoking cigarettes was the cool thing to do at that time.  It began innocently enough for me.  I was only 12 and a friend came to our cottage with me.  I tried smoking, but couldn’t inhale.  But I was hooked.  I kept trying to smoke and I was going to learn to inhale.  By the time I was 16 I was smoking regularly, perhaps 2-8 cigarettes a day.

Then I met the man, who was to become my husband. He smoked a pack a day. By the time I was 19, I was smoking that much too.  I really don’t know why I enjoyed it so much.  It is only in the last few years I have come to understand that all my emotions went up in smoke.  I smoked when I was happy, sad, mad or glad.  I smoked to celebrate the beginning and end of the day.  I smoked on my coffee break and lunch hour from work.  If I was angry with my husband or some other family member, the first thing I did was reach for a cigarette.  With every inhale and exhale, my problems seemed to disappear.

By the time my son was 3, he was fascinated with cigarettes and the ashtray.  One thing I didn’t want was for him to become a smoker.  A hypocrite was something I was not!  I quit smoking in the spring of 1988 when I was pregnant with my daughter.  For three days, I lay on the couch in the fetal position having withdrawal.  It was tough, but I was determined to quit for my kids’ sake.  Exactly six weeks after I quit smoking, I was visiting a farm and my nose started running.  It wouldn’t stop.  I went through a box of tissues in 24 hours.  I went to see my doctor.  He said I had allergies.  I shook my head in disbelief.  How could this be?  I quit smoking to get healthy and this is what I get?  I took allergy pills and/or a needle for a few years.  Every time I walked by the perfume counter in a store I would start to sneeze.

Over a 15-year period my allergies eventually subsided.  I didn’t need to take medication for them anymore.  During this time, I was diagnosed with depression, then bipolar disorder.

This is when the real work on myself began.  I read over 200 self-help/motivational books, attending workshops and support groups, left my marriage and began to rebuild my life.

Since 2005 I have had very few problems with my allergies acting up.  Also by 2005, I had resolved every issue I had with people in my life to the best of my ability.  I knew that getting out of toxic relationships and/or jobs was the key to my well-being.  As a side effect, my allergies cleared up as well.

Fast forward to the summer of 2008.  I met a man and fell in love with him very quickly.  However, he was never available.  I didn’t want to believe he was married, but the signs were all there.  But there was something about this man that captivated me.  I wanted him more than I have ever wanted a man.  But all I got was the leftovers.

A few months later he was going away on business.  I told him when he got back he had to decide; it was her or me.  Finally, I had to accept that we would never be together.  When I tried to accept this fact, my sinuses started acting up.  I hadn’t been bothered by allergies for four years.  My nose just ran and ran and ran over a 24-hour period.  I couldn’t sleep, I was so stuffed up.  I tried working, but had to come home.  I could hardly breathe.  I took some over-the-counter medication, but it didn’t help.  I told my girlfriend how I was feeling.  She let me talk and talk and talk.  When I finally was all talked out, my allergies eased up.

Now fast forward to 2015.  I was slightly hypo-manic and decided to contact him.  I hadn’t thought about him in years, but for some reason I needed him again.  Once again, we started up a relationship.  However, by this time he had left his wife a year earlier.  Of course, I was daydreaming about how we would one day live together.  When, once again, I realized he was just using me, and my allergies acted up.   It was only when I could let him go that my sinuses cleared up again.  I have seen over and over again that when I am really upset about something, my nose gets stuffed up.

You see, when we smoke, we are smoking all our emotions away.  When I quit smoking in 1988 there was nowhere for my emotions to go because I didn’t know how to talk to people about what I was feeling.  We didn’t talk about problems in our family; problems got swept under the rug hopefully to be forgotten about and go away on their own.  It was only when I learned to talk about anything and everything that was bothering me that my allergies disappeared.  They only rear up once in a while, but don’t last for more than a day or two because I can usually pinpoint what the issue is and talk in out with a trusted friend.

If you are bothered by allergies, go back to when they started.  What triggered them?  Do you agree or disagree with my opinion about why we get allergies?

https://www.bphope.com/blog/irritated-angry-and-aggressive-bipolar-disorder/

My friend and fellow blogger, Julie Fast (info below) wrote this article. And it is truer than true. The intensity behind our anger, the strength, is unbelievable! And yes medications that control mood can be very helpful but sometimes, anger will slip by. Vigilance, behavior modification and medication are all needed to put this genie back into its bottle.

Unfortunately, aggressive irritation is, quite often, a symptom of bipolar disorder.

Aggressive irritation is a unfortunate symptom of bipolar disorder. It often comes with a down swing or a mixed episode where you’re manic and depressed at the same time.

We all experience irritation- that’s a normal part of life. Getting cut off on the free way- rude people- crowds and long lines at the supermarket can make us irritated. We may mutter under our breath and give a lot of dirty looks when we get in these situations.

Bipolar aggressive irritation is different- it has a lot of strength behind it. Instead of just getting irritated when we get cut off on the free way- we yell and scream, honk the horn and if it’s particularly bad- actually chase down the person with our car. Oh yes, this happens!

If someone is rude to a person in an aggressive irritated mood swing- they had better watch out- we may say, “What the @$@#$#@ are you looking at! You have a problem with me!” And we will move in on them and practically growl.

Bipolar aggressive irritation is different– it has a lot of strength behind it

Some other signs of this aggressive irritation: throwing things- such as wanting to throw my $%#%% computer across the room when the internet won’t work!  Or feeling my head and neck jerk because I’m so angry at something.

This is NOT good stuff, but it’s common.

If you love someone with bipolar, especially a man in his 20s, this may be all too familiar.

Here is some good news. Medications can work wonders with irritation.  Then behavior modification has to become a part of life.

When I get irritated, angry and aggressive, I have learned to calm myself down- and at least stop myself before I take my aggression too far!

Julie

Julie A. Fast is the author of Loving Someone with Bipolar Disorder, Take Charge of Bipolar Disorder, Get it Done When You’re Depressed and The Health Cards Treatment System for Bipolar Disorder. She is a columnist and blogger for BP Magazine and won the Mental Health America journalism award for the best mental health column in the US. Julie was also the recipient of the Eli Lily Reintegration award for her work in bipolar disorder advocacy. Julie is a bipolar disorder expert for the Dr.Oz and Oprah created site ShareCare. Julie is CEU certified and regularly trains health care professionals including psychiatric residents, social workers, therapists and general practitioners on bipolar disorder management skills. She was the original consultant for Claire Danes for the show Homeland and is on the mental health expert registry for People Magazine. She works as a coach for parents and partners of people with bipolar disorder. Julie is currently writing a book for children called Hortensia and the Magical Brain: Poems for Kids with Bipolar, Anxiety, Psychosis and Depression. You can find more about her work at www.www.JulieFast.com and www.BipolarHappens.com

This research shows that schizophrenia may NOT be the result of abnormalities in neurons, but actually abnormalities in cells that support neurons. These cells are Glial cells or Glia. Glia includes two major types: astrocytes and oligodendrocytes.  Astrocytes are the brain’s principal support cells, while oligodendrocytes are responsible for producing myelin, the fatty tissue that, like the insulation on electrical wires, wraps the axons that connect different nerve cells.   The source of both these cells is another cell type called the glial progenitor cell (GPC).

When the production of glia is abnormal, there is less connectivity and nerve impulses are not optimal.

When glial cells from schizophrenic people are turned into pluripotent stem cells and then Glial progenitor cells and injected into brains of neonatal mice, these mice show all the symptoms of schizophrenia, they were more fearful, anxious, anti-social, and had a variety of cognitive deficits. While mice who were implanted with glial cells that were from normal people did not show these symptoms.

So this a very interesting finding, that the support cells may well be involved in the development of schizophrenia!

This could lead to new, and hopefully better, ways of treating people with schizophrenia.

Please read below for more details.

https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/5101/faulty-support-cells-disrupt-communication-in-brains-of-people-with-schizophrenia.aspx

New research has identified the culprit behind the wiring problems in the brains of people with schizophrenia.  When researchers transplanted human brain cells generated from individuals diagnosed with childhood-onset schizophrenia into mice, the animal’s nerve cell networks did not mature properly and the mice exhibited the same anti-social and anxious behaviors seen in people with the disease.

“The findings of this study argue that glial cell dysfunction may be the basis of childhood-onset schizophrenia,” said University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) neurologist Steve Goldman, M.D., Ph.D., co-director of the Center for Translational Neuromedicine and lead author of the study which appears today in the journal Cell.  “The inability of these cells to do their job, which is to help nerve cells build and maintain healthy and effective communication networks, appears to be a primary contributor to the disease.”

Glia are an important family of support cells found in the brain and play a critical role in the development and maintenance of the brain’s complex interconnected network of neurons.   Glia includes two major types: astrocytes and oligodendrocytes.  Astrocytes are the brain’s principal support cells, while oligodendrocytes are responsible for producing myelin, the fatty tissue that, like the insulation on electrical wires, wraps the axons that connect different nerve cells.   The source of both these cells is another cell type called the glial progenitor cell (GPC).

Astrocytes perform several functions in the brain.  During development, astrocytes colonize areas of the brain and establish domains in which these cells help direct and organize the network of connections between nerve cells.  Individual astrocytes also send out hundreds of long fibers that interact with synapses – the junction where one neuron’s axon meets another’s dendrite.  The astrocytes help facilitate the communication between neurons at the synapses by regulating the flow of glutamate and potassium, which enable neurons to “fire” when they are communicating with each other.

In the new study, the researchers obtained skin cells from individuals with childhood-onset schizophrenia and reprogrammed the cells to create induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) which, like embryonic stem cells, are capable of giving rise to any cell type found in the body.  Employing a process of first developed by the Goldman lab, the team manipulated the iPSCs to create human GPCs.

The human GPCs were then transplanted into the brains of neonatal mice.  These cells out-competed the animal’s own native glia, resulting in mice with brains comprised of animal neurons and human GPCs, oligodendrocytes, and astrocytes.

The researchers observed that human glial cells derived from schizophrenic patients were highly dysfunctional.  The development of oligodendrocytes was delayed and the cells did not create enough myelin-producing cells, meaning signal transmission between the neurons was impaired.

The development of astrocytes was similarly tardy so that the cells were not present when needed and were thus ineffective in guiding the formation of connections between neurons.  The astrocytes also did not mature properly, resulting in misshapen cells that could not fully support the signaling functions of the neurons around them.

“The astrocytes didn’t fully mature and their fibers did not fill out their normal domains, meaning that while they provided control to some synapses, others had no coverage,” said Martha Windrem, Ph.D., with URMC’s Center for Translational Neuromedicine and first author on the study.  “As a result, the neural networks in the animals became desynchronized and uncoordinated.”

The researchers also subjected the mice to a series of behavioral tests.  They observed that the mice with human glial cells from individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia were more fearful, anxious, anti-social, and had a variety of cognitive deficits compared to mice transplanted with human glial cells obtained from healthy people.

The study’s authors point out that the new research provides scientists with a foundation to explore new treatments for the disease.  Because schizophrenia is a unique to humans, until now scientists have been limited in their ability to study the disease.  The new animal model developed the by the researchers can be used to accelerate the process of testing drugs and other therapies in schizophrenia.  The study also identifies a number of glial gene expression flaws that appear to create chemical imbalances that disrupt communication between neurons.  These abnormalities could represent targets for new therapies.