Citation

Shinohara S, Nakamura M, Omiya Y, Higuchi M, Hagiwara N, Mitsuyoshi S, Toda H, Saito T, Tanichi M, Yoshino A, Tokuno S. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021; 18(10).

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/ijerph18105435

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

BACKGROUND: In many developed countries, mood disorders have become problematic, and the economic loss due to treatment costs and interference with work is immeasurable. Therefore, a simple technique to determine individuals' depressive state and stress level is desired.

METHODS: We developed a method to assess specific the psychological issues of individuals with major depressive disorders using emotional components contained in their voice. We propose two indices: vitality, a short-term index, and mental activity, a long-term index capturing trends in vitality. To evaluate our method, we used the voices of healthy individuals (n = 14) and patients with major depression (n = 30). The patients were also assessed by specialists using the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAM-D).

RESULTS: A significant negative correlation existed between the vitality extracted from the voices and HAM-D scores (r = -0.33, p < 0.05). Furthermore, we could discriminate the voice data of healthy individuals and patients with depression with a high accuracy using the vitality indicator (p = 0.0085, area under the curve of the receiver operating characteristic curve = 0.76).

Language: en

Keywords

emotion analysis; mental activity; mood disorder assessment; noninvasiveness; vitality; voice index