Speech Analysis Can Help Measure Diagnosis, Severity, and Onset of Mental Illness
Neuroscience News
Objective measurement of psychiatric disorders has long proved challenging. Yet, there is ample evidence that analysis of speech patterns can accurately diagnose depression and psychosis, measure their severity, and predict their onset, according to a literature review featured in the January/February issue of the Harvard Review of Psychiatry.
The review examined current published literature related to the use of speech pattern analysis to manage psychiatric disorders and identified four key areas of application: diagnostic classification, severity assessment, onset prediction, as well as prognosis and treatment outcomes.
“Models that bring together multiple speech features can distinguish speakers with psychiatric disorders from healthy controls with high accuracy,” writes Rudolf Uher, PhD, MD, Dalhousie University Department of Psychiatry and Nova Scotia Health, and colleagues Katerina Dikaios, MSc, Sheri Rempel, MSc, Sri Harsha Dumpala, MSc, Sageev Oore, PhD, and Michael Kiefte, PhD, in the January/February issue of Harvard Review of Psychiatry.
