Depresión y ansiedad según riesgo suicida en jóvenes colombianos: Análisis secundario con metodología mixta

This study analyzes the differences in language used to describe symptoms of depression and anxiety in 440 young Colombians (18-30 years old) with or without suicidal risk. A secondary analysis of data from previous studies was conducted using a mixed-methods design with a transformative approach. This included responses to a sociodemographic questionnaire, an open-ended questionnaire on symptoms of depression and anxiety, the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21), and the Plutchik Suicide Risk Scale. The procedure included corpus normalization, vectorization using the fastText model, and dimensionality reduction using the t-SNE algorithm. The results confirmed that repetitive, focused negative thinking was prevalent among all participants. Furthermore, greater intensity and severity of symptoms were observed in participants with suicidal risk, regardless of the specific symptom type. Using this methodology within the transdiagnostic framework offers a useful empirical approach for qualitatively exploring the structure of emotional distress. The findings suggest that suicide risk is not an isolated or disconnected linguistic pattern, but rather may emerge within the context of repetitive negative thinking understood as experiential avoidance.