Identification of Emotionally Disturbed Students

Role of English Faculty in Linguistic Preventive Intervention

Abstract

This research presents linguistic preventive intervention initiative for the English Faculty to screen emotionally disturbed Pakistani university students. The aim was to investigate creative writing data of the youth for detection of depression and suicide related language, on a text analysis tool- SNARE. Poems and essays of 380 university students were run on SNARE results of which showed that linguistic warning signs of emotional disturbance were found in the writing of 170 students. The results supported the viability of a pedagogical linguistic approach of detecting emotionally disturbed students with the vision to take timely measures for their wellbeing.