Linguistic Indicators of Mental Health Recovery in Selected Depression Survivors' Speech

Mental health illness and mental health recovery narratives have attracted enormous linguistic, medical, psychological and social attention. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to analysing survivors speech data to identify the linguistic indicators of both mental health illness and recovery in survivors recovery narratives. Thus, this study deploys the cognitive analysis theory to identify the linguistic markers of mental health recovery from mental illness in selected speech data collected. The importance and value of this study stems from the fact that mental health, or more specifically, depression, most often, does not get the right amount of attention it deserves. It is against this backdrop of societal neglect that this study would serve as an advocacy for mental health. Four episodes of TEDx Talks were purposively selected from the official YouTube channel of TEDx. These were transposed into text and qualitatively analysed. The findings reveal that, during their depressed state, speakers consistently employed negative linguistic items across all levels of language analysis. However, a discernible shift in the survivors' choice of linguistic items was also noticed. This transformation was marked by the emergence of linguistic items that conveyed empowerment, hope, change, self-love, confidence, identity, purpose, and resilience. The study concludes that a deliberate and positive choice of language is a robust linguistic indicator of mental health recovery from mental illness.