The Study of the Relationship between Linguistic Skills and Psychological Disorders

Abstract: Our current knowledge about the relationship between linguistic skills and psychological disorders is somewhat diffuse. One reason is because it is difficult to investigate this relationship without including conditions that clearly influence the results in one way or another (e.g. culture, environment, socioeconomic class etc). This study aims to investigate the relationship in an attempt to highlight a potential link. By using the lens of several fields altogether; cognitive science, linguistics, neuroscience, neurocognition, this study shed light on the relationship and encourage further studies in this field to determine the role of linguistic skills in mental health in general. In the experiment, linguistic skills were measured opposed to depression as a specific disorder to quantify specific data. Linguistic skills were measured by density and diversity and PHQ-9 survey question were used to determine depression scale. Statistical analysis showed significant correlations between some measures of linguistic skills and PHQ-9. The significant statistical correlation found points towards the hypothesis that, better linguistic skills promote well-being, and psychological disorders take minor effect relative to poorer linguistic skills. This topic is large-scaled which means that background variables must be acknowledged thoroughly, which due to the extent of this thesis, were not. The results are discussed further as well as limitations of the study. Improvements for further research are proposed.