The Physical and the Emotional: Case Report, Mixed-Methods Development, and Discussion

Area of Science:

• Psychiatry and Psychology
• Clinical Research Methods

Background:

• Primary care increasingly uses self-report checklists for emotional disorders like depression and anxiety.
• Psychodynamic theory suggests some emotional issues may be unconscious and missed by self-report measures.
• Existing tools may not identify all patients requiring mental health treatment.

Observation:

• A novel mixed-methods approach was developed to analyze verbal expressions of feelings.
• The approach draws on psychodynamic theory and empirical research, utilizing semi-structured interview data.
• Three categories of verbal expression were identified: specific feeling words, vague feeling words, and physical words.

Findings:

• The developed approach categorizes and quantifies verbal expressions of feelings.
• A case study illustrated how these categories can define measurable patterns in patient language.
• This method has the potential to identify subtle emotional problems in patients who struggle to articulate their feelings.

Implications:

• Clinicians can be trained to use this approach to better detect and understand complex emotional issues.
• This may improve identification of patients needing mental health support, especially those with subtle presentations.
• Future research will focus on validity, reliability, and prevalence in larger samples.