Language and Mental Disorders: A Psycholinguistic Study of the Impact of Psychosis on Language Usage and Thought

Abstract

The goal of the current study was to identify the linguistic markers of dysfunctional speech and thought in patients with psychosis. The study‘s major research question investigated how psychosis impact the way people think and use language. There are two sub-questions under the major problematic; the first question concerned the language characteristics that emerge from psychotic episodes and the second questioned whether all of the linguistic components were affected in all patients as a result of psychosis. This psycholinguistic analysis used qualitative and descriptive methods to address the research problem. Consequently, semi structured interviews with doctors and psychotic patients, observations, and recordings, were used as data collection tools. The participants were all from the Psychiatric Center of Mostaganem, including a psychologist and a psychiatrist, as well as two male and three female psychotic patients. The recorded data of the psychotic patients were recorded and transcribed, and the obtained data were analyzed using the Thought, Language, and Communication Disorders scale of assessment. The results suggested that psychosis symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, and formal thought disorders led to irregularities and disturbances in various linguistic levels. Psychosis caused language use and thought to be illogical, poor, blocked, under pressure, lost, repetitive, deviant, and occasionally incomprehensible. However, not all linguistic characteristics and all patients may experience language usage irregularity; it varied from patient to patient.