Cummins, Nicholas;
Dineley, Judith;
Conde, Pauline;
Matcham, Faith;
Siddi, Sara;
Lamers, Femke;
Carr, Ewan;
... The RADAR-CNS Consortium; + view all
(2023)
Multilingual markers of depression in remotely collected speech samples: A preliminary analysis.
Journal of Affective Disorders
10.1016/j.jad.2023.08.097.
(In press).
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Abstract
Background: Speech contains neuromuscular, physiological and cognitive components, and so is a potential biomarker of mental disorders. Previous studies indicate that speaking rate and pausing are associated with major depressive disorder (MDD). However, results are inconclusive as many studies are small and underpowered and do not include clinical samples. These studies have also been unilingual and use speech collected in controlled settings. If speech markers are to help understand the onset and progress of MDD, we need to uncover markers that are robust to language and establish the strength of associations in real-world data. // Methods: We collected speech data in 585 participants with a history of MDD in the United Kingdom, Spain, and Netherlands as part of the RADAR-MDD study. Participants recorded their speech via smartphones every two weeks for 18 months. Linear mixed models were used to estimate the strength of specific markers of depression from a set of 28 speech features. // Results: Increased depressive symptoms were associated with speech rate, articulation rate and intensity of speech elicited from a scripted task. These features had consistently stronger effect sizes than pauses. // Limitations: Our findings are derived at the cohort level so may have limited impact on identifying intra-individual speech changes associated with changes in symptom severity. The analysis of features averaged over the entire recording may have underestimated the importance of some features. // Conclusions: Participants with more severe depressive symptoms spoke more slowly and quietly. Our findings are from a real-world, multilingual, clinical dataset so represent a step-change in the usefulness of speech as a digital phenotype of MDD.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Multilingual markers of depression in remotely collected speech samples: A preliminary analysis |
| Location: | Netherlands |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.jad.2023.08.097 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2023.08.097 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY license, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | Major depressive disorder;Digital phenotypes; Speech; In-the-wild; Speaking rate |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Health Informatics UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Health Informatics > Clinical Epidemiology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10175917 |
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