CAN LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS BE USED TO IDENTIFY WHETHER ADOLESCENTS WITH A CHRONIC ILLNESS ARE DEPRESSED? - Jones, Loades, Crawley et al Dec 15 2019

Agree. Found a version of the depression subscale here.

It seems like a highly problematic tool to detect depression in ME/CFS.

It's rather frustrating that with so many researchers focused on the psychological aspects of ME/CFS none of them has taken the effort to develop a depression questionnaire that is not confounded by items that ask about ME/CFS symptoms like lack of energy and cognitive problems.

 

But if they did that there would be a distinct lack.of papers!

 

I don't suppose there's any chance of a control group where what the chronic illness sufferers say is taken at face value?

 

Naah, that would mean "Linguistic Analysis" being synonymous with "Listening".

 

You're right, ridiculous concept. Esther would never agree to it.

 

Oh, no. They say they're listening, they never said they'd take any of it into account. Well, it's more like hearing, I guess. Or pretending to. Anyway, only style matters, no substance. This study basically takes tone policing to a whole new level.

 

What seems pointless about this research is that they are trying to use very squishy inputs (words the person uses) to predict squishy target outputs (depression as diagnosed by this scale). In a way it seems similar to the problem of trying to interpret the effects of unblinded interventions on subjective outcomes. GIGO.

I think research like this might potentially be interesting if one side of it was 'hard' data - e.g. language --> biological measurements, or biological measurements --> depression scale, etc.. But as it is it just seems much too squishy on both sides to get a finding that could actually be anchored in anything.

A related major problem is that reading and responding to a depression questionnaire is itself a use of language, so there is a lot of circularity built into the analysis. Particularly in this case, because...

...While the title says 'children with a chronic illness', the only illness studied is CFS/ME. This means that interpretation of the depression questionnaire is extremely confounded by the symptoms of the condition being studied, in a way it wouldn't be if they were trying to study, say, chronic visible skin conditions, or refractory asthma, etc..


I mean it takes about 5 minutes of thinking to see that this is a waste, regardless of how well-meaning, or how 'cool' the idea is. Unfortunately it appears that in this field 5 minutes of critical thinking is not to be found.