We present a study investigating the linguistic sentiment associated with schizophrenia and depression in research-based texts. To this end, we construct a corpus of over 260,000 PubMed abstracts published between 1975 and 2025, covering both disorders. For sentiment analysis, we fine-tune two sentence-transformer models using SetFit with a training dataset consisting of sentences rated for valence by psychiatrists and clinical psychologists. Our analysis identifies significant temporal trends and differences between the two conditions. While the mean positive sentiment in abstracts and titles increases over time, a more detailed analysis reveals a marked rise in both maximum negative and maximum positive sentiment, suggesting a shift toward more polarized language. Notably, sentiment in abstracts on schizophrenia is significantly more negative overall. Furthermore, an exploratory analysis indicates that negative sentences are disproportionately concentrated at the beginning of abstracts. These findings suggest that linguistic style in scientific literature is evolving. We discuss the broader ethical and societal implications of these results and propose recommendations for more cautious language use in scientific discourse.

We present a study of the linguistic output of the German-speaking writer Robert Walser using NLP. We curated a corpus comprising texts written by Walser during periods of sound health, and writings from the year before his hospitalization, and writings from the first year of his stay in a psychiatric clinic, all likely at- tributed to schizophrenia. Within this corpus, we identified and analyzed a total of 20 lin- guistic markers encompassing established met- rics for lexical diversity, semantic similarity, and syntactic complexity. Additionally, we ex- plored lesser-known markers such as lexical innovation, concreteness, and imageability. No- tably, we introduced two additional markers for phonological similarity for the first time within this context. Our findings reveal sig- nificant temporal dynamics in these markers closely associated with Walser’s contempora- neous diagnosis of schizophrenia. Furthermore, we investigated the relationship between these markers, leveraging them for classification of the schizophrenic episode.