Language Specific madness

Just some quotes from an article i found on a psychology blog. The article covers some evidence linking certain mental disorders such as bipolar disorder, to specific languages in bilingual individuals. Im not sure of the deeper implications of this study, but the findings are interesting none the less.

I've just found this fascinating study on language and psychosis that found that multilingual psychotic patients can present with either different or less psychotic symptoms depending on the language they use.

This is from the introduction, which outlines some of the curious effects:

Zulueta’s (1984) review article on the implications of bilingualism in the study and treatment of psychiatric disorders showed that certain psychotic fluent bilinguals, who had learnt their second language during or after puberty, could present with different psychotic phenomena depending on which language they used. Most of these patients tended to present as more disturbed in their primary ‘mother tongue’ and as less disturbed in their second language (Castillo, 1970; Hemphill, 1971).

Some patients were thought disordered in one language and less so or not at all in their other language; some complained of having delusions in one language and not in their other language, and some experienced auditory hallucinations in one language and not in another. Moreover, some patients who were fluent bilinguals lost their linguistic competence in their second language during their psychotic illness (Heinemann & Assion, 1996; Hughes, 1981).


all snipets taken from mindhacks.com