Given the high prevalence of depressive symptoms in deaf people and the deficit in intervention processes, the purpose of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of emotional disclosure using Colombian sign language in two deaf participants with mild depressive symptoms. A single-case AB experimental design was used. Pre and post-intervention variations in depressive symptoms were evaluated. Similarly, variations in linguistic style were analyzed. The results indicate that emotional disclosure decreased mild depressive symptoms in the two participants, reaching the rating of no symptoms at the end of the sessions and after one month of follow-up. According to the percentage of non-overlapping data and non-overlapping of all pairs indices, the treatment had a medium effect. In terms of linguistic style, the role of negative emotion words, positive emotions, causality, and the personal pronoun I as promoters of recovery is discussed. New research aimed at building evaluation and intervention models in the deaf community is proposed.

Keywords:
Emotional disclosure, depression, deaf, language style, LIWC

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