
Cell Phones Can Hear Depression in People’s Voices - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/mood-ringcell-phones-can-hear-depression-in-peoples-voices
======
cmdlinerambo
I totally need this...having suffered from several manic episodes that usually
ramp up over a period of a month or two before I become straight up psychotic,
completely lost. It would change my life to be able to check in with my
psychiatrist after several alerts, rather than when I get to the point that I
need to be admitted. its also not the type of message that friends and family
like to give.

~~~
soup10
oh man the feels, stay strong friend. mental illness history myself. gotta
remember to stay safe and make sure others don't see you as a threat. try to
do things that make your life calmer and more stress free. it's the only way
to counter the mood swings.

------
d23
I wonder if we'll start to see the NSA doing targeting based on psychological
state detected by their voice recordings. Maybe it's already happening.

------
georgeecollins
Someone please make an app that makes psychiatric analysis based on voice! I
can think of a million uses, from tracking my own mood to secretly diagnosing
my co-workers.

~~~
johnloeber
>Psychiatric analysis based on voice

The benefits of this when implemented correctly nonwithstanding, there's a
major problem in that any implementation is highly likely to be quite flawed.
See the proliferation of "health-tracking" apps that are basically quackery.
With psychiatric analysis --- where the signals to track are much weakly
defined than heart rate, blood pressure, etc. --- it is far too likely that
apps will consistently make poor diagnoses, to the detriment of the user.

~~~
krigi
I did plenty of graduate work with speech recognition; and detecting cognitive
states based on speech is not much better than a coin-flip. Depression,
drunkenness, deceit, happiness, etc. are hard to detect for an arbitrary
person with accuracy. Speech signals for latent states in human behavior are
highly idiosyncratic. The answer I always give when asked if something can be
detected by speech (most requested - lying): "Yes, but only if you have a lot
of time and want it to be accurate for at most a couple people. And it's going
to be expensive."

------
astazangasta
People, please don't show a continuous variable with a rainbow gradient. Two
colors will do - red/green, green/black, red/blue. Too many colors and you
lose reference. You see green and have to think about what part of the
distribution it maps to; this defeats the whole purpose. Rainbows are pretty,
but not the best choice.

------
Aldo_MX
What if I'm in a good mood and the NSA believes I'm a maniac just because a
telemarketer cold-called me?

~~~
michaelochurch
It'd take a lot of speech data to make a diagnosis, and I'd imagine it'd be
error-prone at first.

As for how to differentiate hypomania from excitement, I'm skeptical that it
can be done. But if someone who usually talks 50% of the time in conversations
is taking 95% of the time, and this persists over weeks, there's a signal
there. Also, hypomania tends to produce a lot of run-on and deeply-nested
(even Lispy (as in having multiple levels of implicit parentheses)) sentences.

Not enough personal experience with actual mania (as opposed to hypomania) to
opine on it or guess what its signals might be. Only had it a couple times and
none recently.

------
analog31
Next: Software that alters the mood of your voice as you speak.

~~~
faitswulff
AutoMood

~~~
walterbell
InstaMood

------
hnriot
google likely already know from your searches for Greek real estate and
Ferrari cars. I'm sure search history analysis can reveal depression just as
effectively.

~~~
tachyonbeam
Maybe more effectively. I really don't do phone calls that often, and my
cellphone is not always close by.

------
orand
"Cell phones can do X" is so link-baity. This is really "microphones + signal
analysis can hear depression in people's voices."

~~~
ksk
Agreed, but it also narrows down on certain things. For e.g. it could mean
that the computing power required is small, and that you don't need an
expensive microphone that captures a wide frequency range.

