Objective speech measures capture depressive symptoms and associated cognitive difficulties.

ABSTRACT: Psychiatry lacks objective biomarkers for assessing depression, relying instead on subjective measures, such as the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD-17). This study examined whether speech features could serve as objective markers of depressive symptoms and its associated cognitive difficulties. Sixty-six individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) and 54 non-depressed control participants completed a speech assessment, responding to the prompt: "Please tell me how you are feeling today." Linguistic (valence, emotional intensity, agency) and acoustic (pitch, pitch variance, speech rate, time spent pausing) features were derived from natural language processing. These speech features were analyzed individually and collectively as a composite score representing overall speech dist

SUBMITTER: Wiseman M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12705680 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature