Psychology Department, University of Arizona.
Psychiatry, University of Arizona Cancer Center.
Health Commun. 2024 Aug;39(9):1888-1898. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2023.2245989. Epub 2023 Aug 9.
Metaphors are pervasive in cancer discourse. However, little is known about how metaphor use develops over time within the same patient, and how metaphor use and its content relate to the mental health of the patient. Here, we analyzed metaphor use in personal essays written by breast cancer patients shortly after the time of diagnosis and nine months later, in relation to their depressive symptoms at both time points. Results show that metaphor use can provide important insight into a patient's current mental state. Specifically, patients who had no change in their depressive symptom levels used metaphors more densely after nine months. In addition, metaphor valence in the later essay was associated with depressive symptoms at study entry and nine months after. Lastly, we observed a shift in metaphor reference pattern for different symptom trajectories, such that those who recovered from initially elevated depressive symptoms used fewer self-referencing metaphors and more cancer-referencing metaphors in their later essay. Our work suggests that metaphor use reflects how a patient is coping with their diagnosis.
隐喻在癌症话语中无处不在。然而，人们对于同一个患者的隐喻使用如何随时间发展，以及隐喻使用及其内容与患者的心理健康之间的关系知之甚少。在这里，我们分析了乳腺癌患者在诊断后不久和九个月后所写的个人随笔中的隐喻使用情况，同时还分析了他们在这两个时间点的抑郁症状。结果表明，隐喻的使用可以为患者的当前心理状态提供重要的见解。具体来说，在九个月后，抑郁症状水平没有变化的患者使用隐喻的频率更高。此外，后期随笔中的隐喻的情感色彩与研究开始时和九个月后的抑郁症状有关。最后，我们观察到不同症状轨迹的隐喻参考模式发生了变化，例如，那些最初抑郁症状有所缓解的患者在后期随笔中使用的自我参照隐喻更少，而使用癌症参照隐喻更多。我们的工作表明，隐喻的使用反映了患者如何应对诊断。
