There is an "I" in depression

So while I'm commiserating with myself about the lack of sexiness but theoretical virtue of the paper I sent out yesterday, I've been for a bit of a trawl back through some of my more favoured interest areas. I was a bit gutted to find that there was a special issue on what I'd like to think is my area of expertise, and I didn't get to contribute.

I did find an interesting article by James Pennebaker, whose work I generally admire (although I do have some problems with his methods occasionally), who has recently found that depressed people use the pronoun "I" more than never-depressed people. Once depressed people start out with a lower frequency of "I", but by the end of their writing, start to use "I" more often. It sounds a bit trivial, but he has done some fascinating work looking at therapeutic uses of writing, and it also neatly ties in with theories of depression relating to over-self-focussing.