ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
This article is part of the Research TopicMental Health Challenges in Vulnerable Groups: Psychological Well-Being, Learning, and Support in Disadvantaged ContextsView all 19 articles
Relationship between socio-linguistic factors and symptoms of depression, anxiety and psychosis in the general population
Provisionally accepted
- 1Universidad del Pais Vasco, Leioa, Spain
- 2Galdakao University Hospital, Galdakao, Spain
- 3Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language, San Sebastián, Spain
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Over the last decade, and particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant increase in psychological distress among the population, with a particularly high impact on young people. This phenomenon has intensified interest in identifying risk and protective factors associated with mental health. In this context, the present study aimed to analyse the relationship between sociodemographic and linguistic variables and different indicators of mental health in a bilingual sample of the general population of the Basque Country. A total of 521 bilingual individuals (Basque/English) participated, completing validated questionnaires on anxiety (GAD-7), depression (PHQ-9) and prodromal psychotic symptoms (PQ-B), along with a sociodemographic questionnaire and a measure of linguistic competence. Univariate analyses and linear regression models were performed to examine the association between sociodemographic variables (age, gender, educational level, employment, marital status and ancestry) and linguistic variables (perceived proficiency in local languages and foreign language certification) with mental health indicators. The results show that higher educational attainment is consistently associated with lower levels of depressive and psychotic symptoms. Likewise, a better self-perception of competence in the usual languages of communication (Basque and Spanish) is related to lower scores on prodromal psychotic symptoms. Having children is associated with lower levels of depressive symptoms, while variables such as gender, marital status, and employment status did not show significant associations in this predominantly young sample. Taken together, these findings underscore the role of educational level and sociolinguistic context as relevant factors in mental health and point to the need to incorporate these dimensions into the design of prevention and intervention strategies, especially those aimed at the young population.
Keywords: Bilingual, Education, language proficiency, Mental Health, sociocultural context
Received: 21 Aug 2025; Accepted: 26 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Ozamiz-Etxebarria, Erkoreka and Mancini. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Leire Erkoreka
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