Characterizing the patient experience of physical restraint in psychiatric settings via a linguistic, sentiment, and metaphor analysis
Abstract Physical Restraint (PR) is a coercive procedure used in emergency psychiatric care to ensure safety in life-threatening situations. Because of its traumatic nature, studies emphasize the importance of considering the patient’s subjective experience. We pursued this aim by overcoming classic...
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Nature Portfolio
2025-01-01
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-83999-9 |
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| author | Cristiano Nichini Chiara Barattieri di San Pietro Biagio Scalingi Eleonora Alecci Luca Toschi Simone Cavallotti Anna Chiara Cigognini Federico Durbano Silvia Ferraris Patrizia Santinon Chiara Pompei Federico Frau Veronica Mangiaterra Luca Bischetti Marta Bosia Gianluca Peschi Pierluigi Politi Valentina Bambini |
| author_facet | Cristiano Nichini Chiara Barattieri di San Pietro Biagio Scalingi Eleonora Alecci Luca Toschi Simone Cavallotti Anna Chiara Cigognini Federico Durbano Silvia Ferraris Patrizia Santinon Chiara Pompei Federico Frau Veronica Mangiaterra Luca Bischetti Marta Bosia Gianluca Peschi Pierluigi Politi Valentina Bambini |
| author_sort | Cristiano Nichini |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Abstract Physical Restraint (PR) is a coercive procedure used in emergency psychiatric care to ensure safety in life-threatening situations. Because of its traumatic nature, studies emphasize the importance of considering the patient’s subjective experience. We pursued this aim by overcoming classic qualitative approaches and innovatively applying a multilayered semiautomated language analysis to a corpus of narratives about PR collected from 99 individuals across seven mental health services in Italy. Compared to a reference corpus, PR narratives were characterized by reduced fluency and lexical density, yet a greater use of emotional and cognitive terms, verbs, and first-person singular pronouns. Sadness was the most represented emotion, followed by anger and fear. One-third of the PR narratives contained at least one metaphor, with Animals and War/Prison as the most distinctive source domains. The quality and length of the PR experience impacted both the structure and the sentiment of the narratives. Findings confirm the distressful nature of PR but also point to the use of various linguistic mechanisms which might serve as an early adaptive response toward healing from the traumatic experience. Overall, the study highlights the importance of Natural Language Processing as an unobtrusive window into subjective experience, offering insights for therapeutic choices. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-2ed0b06f53ba492aacdab0362a3edf95 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2045-2322 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
| publisher | Nature Portfolio |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Scientific Reports |
| spelling | doaj-art-2ed0b06f53ba492aacdab0362a3edf952025-01-19T12:17:16ZengNature PortfolioScientific Reports2045-23222025-01-0115111610.1038/s41598-024-83999-9Characterizing the patient experience of physical restraint in psychiatric settings via a linguistic, sentiment, and metaphor analysisCristiano Nichini0Chiara Barattieri di San Pietro1Biagio Scalingi2Eleonora Alecci3Luca Toschi4Simone Cavallotti5Anna Chiara Cigognini6Federico Durbano7Silvia Ferraris8Patrizia Santinon9Chiara Pompei10Federico Frau11Veronica Mangiaterra12Luca Bischetti13Marta Bosia14Gianluca Peschi15Pierluigi Politi16Valentina Bambini17Department of Mental Health and Addiction, ASST PaviaLaboratory of Neurolinguistics and Experimental Pragmatics (NEP), University School for Advanced Studies IUSSLaboratory of Neurolinguistics and Experimental Pragmatics (NEP), University School for Advanced Studies IUSSSapienza University of RomeFaculty of Medicine and Psychology, Sapienza University of RomeDepartment of Mental Health and Addiction, ASST Santi Paolo e CarloDepartment of Health Sciences, Università degli Studi di MilanoDepartment of Mental Health and Addiction, ASST Melegnano e della MartesanaDepartment of Mental Health ASL VC - ASL BI - ASL VCOCentre for Care and Community Studies in Medical Humanities DAIRI, Azienda Ospedaliero-universitariaLaboratory of Neurolinguistics and Experimental Pragmatics (NEP), University School for Advanced Studies IUSSLaboratory of Neurolinguistics and Experimental Pragmatics (NEP), University School for Advanced Studies IUSSLaboratory of Neurolinguistics and Experimental Pragmatics (NEP), University School for Advanced Studies IUSSLaboratory of Neurolinguistics and Experimental Pragmatics (NEP), University School for Advanced Studies IUSSSchool of Medicine, Vita-Salute San Raffaele UniversityASST LeccoDepartment of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of PaviaLaboratory of Neurolinguistics and Experimental Pragmatics (NEP), University School for Advanced Studies IUSSAbstract Physical Restraint (PR) is a coercive procedure used in emergency psychiatric care to ensure safety in life-threatening situations. Because of its traumatic nature, studies emphasize the importance of considering the patient’s subjective experience. We pursued this aim by overcoming classic qualitative approaches and innovatively applying a multilayered semiautomated language analysis to a corpus of narratives about PR collected from 99 individuals across seven mental health services in Italy. Compared to a reference corpus, PR narratives were characterized by reduced fluency and lexical density, yet a greater use of emotional and cognitive terms, verbs, and first-person singular pronouns. Sadness was the most represented emotion, followed by anger and fear. One-third of the PR narratives contained at least one metaphor, with Animals and War/Prison as the most distinctive source domains. The quality and length of the PR experience impacted both the structure and the sentiment of the narratives. Findings confirm the distressful nature of PR but also point to the use of various linguistic mechanisms which might serve as an early adaptive response toward healing from the traumatic experience. Overall, the study highlights the importance of Natural Language Processing as an unobtrusive window into subjective experience, offering insights for therapeutic choices.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-83999-9Physical restraintCoercionNatural language processingSentiment analysisMetaphor analysisMetaphor |
| spellingShingle | Cristiano Nichini Chiara Barattieri di San Pietro Biagio Scalingi Eleonora Alecci Luca Toschi Simone Cavallotti Anna Chiara Cigognini Federico Durbano Silvia Ferraris Patrizia Santinon Chiara Pompei Federico Frau Veronica Mangiaterra Luca Bischetti Marta Bosia Gianluca Peschi Pierluigi Politi Valentina Bambini Characterizing the patient experience of physical restraint in psychiatric settings via a linguistic, sentiment, and metaphor analysis Scientific Reports Physical restraint Coercion Natural language processing Sentiment analysis Metaphor analysis Metaphor |
| title | Characterizing the patient experience of physical restraint in psychiatric settings via a linguistic, sentiment, and metaphor analysis |
| title_full | Characterizing the patient experience of physical restraint in psychiatric settings via a linguistic, sentiment, and metaphor analysis |
| title_fullStr | Characterizing the patient experience of physical restraint in psychiatric settings via a linguistic, sentiment, and metaphor analysis |
| title_full_unstemmed | Characterizing the patient experience of physical restraint in psychiatric settings via a linguistic, sentiment, and metaphor analysis |
| title_short | Characterizing the patient experience of physical restraint in psychiatric settings via a linguistic, sentiment, and metaphor analysis |
| title_sort | characterizing the patient experience of physical restraint in psychiatric settings via a linguistic sentiment and metaphor analysis |
| topic | Physical restraint Coercion Natural language processing Sentiment analysis Metaphor analysis Metaphor |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-83999-9 |
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