The researchers looked for these language patterns in 14 million books, published over the past 125 years in English, Spanish, and German, that are available via Google Ngram, to see how their prevalence has changed over time.
(emphasis mine)
Given that what is published is a tiny, highly selected fraction of what is said, spoken, etc, why should we feel confident in drawing any population-wide conclusions at all from a study of published work? Even if we limit the relevant population to authors, I would be hesitant to draw any conclusions, given that only a fraction of what authors write gets published, and what is published often goes through multiple rounds of editing before it hits the presses.
Maybe it’s just that cultural tastes have shifted so that more open discussions of poor mental health are acceptable, and, as a result we see greater representation of that in published work.
(emphasis mine)
Given that what is published is a tiny, highly selected fraction of what is said, spoken, etc, why should we feel confident in drawing any population-wide conclusions at all from a study of published work? Even if we limit the relevant population to authors, I would be hesitant to draw any conclusions, given that only a fraction of what authors write gets published, and what is published often goes through multiple rounds of editing before it hits the presses.
Maybe it’s just that cultural tastes have shifted so that more open discussions of poor mental health are acceptable, and, as a result we see greater representation of that in published work.