Evaluation of texts written by patients with endogenous mental disorders

Background: the importance of identifying characteristics of texts written by patients with mental diseases of the endogenous circle is due to the fact that psychological and behavioral disorders in mental diseases manifest themselves in speech activity, including writing, and are little studied in the Russian-language sample.

The aim: is to identify the parameters of the texts characteristic of disorders of schizophrenic and affective spectrum, the analysis of the relationship of the selected parameters with clinical symptoms and personality.

Materials and methods: the study involved 29 patients with endogenous mental disorders (14 patients diagnosed with F2 according to ICD-10, 15 patients with F3) and 41 healthy people. Clinico-psychological, psychometric methods and statistical analysis were used. Everyone wrote an essay on the topic «Me, others, the world», answered Big Five personality traits, patients filled out the questionnaire SCL-90. Results: it is shown that patients are more focused on themselves, their texts often show an ambivalent or negative attitude toward themselves, a sense of isolation from the world, a sense of instability of the «fragility» of the surrounding world. «Torn» and «pretentious» texts were much more common in patients and «broken» texts were specific only for patients. It is shown that the presence of «pathological characteristics» in the text of patients is associated with the severity of clinical symptoms. Correlations of text «pathological» characteristics with clinical symptoms according to SCL-90 (scales of depression, anxiety, psychotism, general severity of the state, severity of distress) and personal characteristics (introversion, separation, naturalness, emotionality) are shown in patients.

Conclusion: thus, the proposed parameters for assessing the texts revealed the peculiarities of perception of oneself and other, a violation of the social orientation of the individual, a decrease in the ability to integrate contradictory and ambivalent phenomena into a holistic view of oneself and the world in the text of patients. «Pathological characteristics» of the text reflect the presence of clinical symptoms and are associated with personality traits.

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