Lexical indicators of anxiety in schizophrenia.

Abstract

Background and objectives: Anxiety is a dominant emotion in schizophrenia. It is most often diagnosed by questionnaire-based methods. In this study, it was decided to analyse the utterances of patients with schizophrenia for the occurrence of lexical indicators of anxiety, which are a good predictor of experienced anxiety and lie beyond the subject's control.

Design: The indicators most frequently described in the literature and considered to be of the most significant diagnostic value were selected: first-person pronouns and verbs; causal expressions and conjunctions; affirmative and negative particles; and dogmatic expressions. It was assumed that more of these would appear in the utterances of people with schizophrenia than in the utterances of healthy subjects.

Methods: The study was conducted on 130 patients with paranoid schizophrenia and 130 healthy subjects. They were asked to describe five pictures.

Results: In all verbal indicators of anxiety (except for negative particles) patients with positive schizophrenia attained the highest values, differing significantly from the results for the control groups.

Conclusion: This result is consistent with the subject literature, which emphasizes the high level of anxiety in schizophrenia, especially in its first phase, when the generative symptoms of the illness predominate.