Semantic Shifts in Mental Health-Related Concepts

Talk title: Semantic Shifts in Mental Health-Related Concepts

Event: ‘Rapid Fire’ Talk – Mental Health PhD Program Conference (University of Melbourne), 3rd October 2025

Abstract: Mental health-related concepts have risen in prominence and changed their meanings in recent decades. I will present a program of research that: (1) introduces a novel computational framework (SIBling) to model the historical semantic change of these concepts, using methods drawn from computational linguistics and natural language processing; (2) demonstrates SIBling’s application to examine how mental health concepts have changed their meanings in academic psychology, media discourse, and everyday language; (3) makes sense of these historical semantic changes by illustrating related social and cultural dynamical processes, such as concept creep, pathologisation, and stigmatisation. Findings hold important social and cultural implications.

1. Semantic Shifts in Mental
Health-Related Concepts
Naomi Baes
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
‘Rapid Fire’ Talk – Mental Health PhD Program Conference, 3
rd
October 2025

2. Our culture is
saturated with
references to
mental health

3. Mental health-related concepts have risen in prominence in
recent decades…
addiction
anger
distress
grief
stress
worry
trauma

4. Trauma has changed its meaning to acquire a psychological
sense and refer to less severe experiences.
Vylomova, E., Murphy, S., & Haslam, N. (2019, August). Evaluation of semantic change of harm-related concepts in psychology. In Proceedings of the 1st International
Workshop on Computational Approaches to Historical Language Change (pp. 29-34).
Baes, N., Vylomova, E., Zyphur, M., & Haslam, N. (2023). The semantic inflation of ‘trauma’ in psychology. Psychology of Language and Communication, 27, 23-45.

5. How can we understand change in the meanings of
mental health concepts?

6. relates to the degree to which a word acquires a more positive
(‘elevation’, ‘amelioration’) or negative (‘degeneration’,
‘pejoration’) connotation
Theoretical Linguistic Framework: SIBling

7. relates to the degree to which a word’s meaning
changes to acquire more (‘meiosis’) or less
(‘hyperbole’, ‘vertical concept creep’)
emotionally charged (i.e., strong, potent,
high-arousal) connotations.
SIBling: Theoretical Linguistic Framework
relates to the degree to which a word acquires a more positive
(‘elevation’, ‘amelioration’) or negative (‘degeneration’,
‘pejoration’) connotation

8. relates to whether a word
expands (‘widening’, ‘horizontal
concept creep’) or contracts
(‘narrowing’) its semantic range
SIBling: Theoretical Linguistic Framework
relates to the degree to which a word acquires a more positive
(‘elevation’, ‘amelioration’) or negative (‘degeneration’,
‘pejoration’) connotation
relates to the degree to which a word’s meaning
changes to acquire more (‘meiosis’) or less
(‘hyperbole’, ‘vertical concept creep’)
emotionally charged (i.e., strong, potent,
high-arousal) connotations.

9. Example: the word trauma
± Sentiment: negative → neutral or ironic tones (colloquial use)
↓ Intensity: serious disorder (PTSD) → trivial event (bad hair cut)
↑ Breadth: physical wound (late 19
th
century definition) →
psychological harm
SIBling: Linguistic model of semantic change
Naomi Baes, Nick Haslam, and Ekaterina Vylomova. 2024. A Multidimensional Framework for Evaluating Lexical Semantic Change with Social
Science Applications. In Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers),
pages 1390–1415, Bangkok, Thailand. Association for Computational Linguistics.

10. Sentiment Breadth
SIB Toolkit: Semantic Shifts in mental health and illness
Intensity

11. Case Study: SIB Shifts in mental health and illness
Decreasing Sentiment
points to increasing
stigmatization of MH and
MI in recent decades
Rising Intensity indicates
growing social concern
and problematization
around MH and MI
Rising Breadth reveals
the semantic inflation
(concept creep) of MH
and MI

12. Trends may be
explained by the
growing tendency to
pathologize negative
emotions and
undesirable behavior.
Naomi Baes, Nick Haslam, and Ekaterina Vylomova. 2023. Semantic Shifts in Mental Health-Related Concepts. In Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Computational
Approaches to Historical Language Change, pages 119–128, Singapore. Association for Computational Linguistics.
addiction
anger
distress
grief
stress
worry

13. Detailed Case Studies: Conceptual Change in the US News (1980-2025)
Schizophrenia
S
I
B
ADHD
[A.D.H.D.
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
A.D.D.
Attention Deficit Disorder
Attention-Deficit Disorder]

14. Key Takeaway: Framework to Model Conceptual Change
•SIBling offers a validated (Baes et al., 2025)
computational toolkit for examining conceptual change,
revealing semantic and cultural dynamics across
multiple dimensions:
1.Breadth (Horizontal Concept Creep)
2.Intensity (Vertical Concept Creep; Normalization)
3.Sentiment (Stigmatization)
4.Pathologization (Thematic Content)
5.Relative Frequency (Cultural Salience)

15. Acknowledgements
Nick Haslam Ψ, Ekaterina Vylomova λ, Haim Dubossarsky ΦTΣ•, Raphaël Merx λ
Ψ Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne
λ School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne
Φ School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London
T The Alan Turing Institute, London
Σ Language Technology Lab, University of Cambridge
This research was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and funded, in part, by Australian
Research Council Discovery Project DP210103984 and by the research program "Change is Key!", supported by Riksbankens
Jubileumsfond (M21-0021).
PhD Supervisor PhD Co-Supervisor Collaborator Collaborator

16. Thank you.
Get in touch!
[email protected]
https://naomibaes.github.io/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/naomibaes/

17. Questions?