Tan Eric J, Neill Erica, Kleiner Jacqui L, Rossell Susan L
Centre for Mental Health and Brain Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia; Department of Psychiatry, St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia.
Centre for Mental Health and Brain Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia; Department of Psychiatry, St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia.
Psychiatry Res. 2023 Mar;321:115079. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2023.115079. Epub 2023 Jan 27.
Depression is a common and debilitating mental illness associated with sadness and negativity and is often comorbid with other psychiatric conditions, such as schizophrenia. Depressive symptoms are presently primarily assessed through clinical interviews, however there are other behavioural indicators being investigated as more objective methods of depressive symptom assessment. The present study aimed to evaluate the utility of assessing depression using quantitative speech parameters by comparing speech between 23 schizophrenia/schizoaffective patients with clinically significant depressive symptoms (DP) 19 schizophrenia/schizoaffective patients without depressive symptoms (NDP) and 22 healthy controls with no psychiatric history (HC). Participant audio recordings were transcribed and analyzed to extract five types of speech variables: utterances, words, speaking rate, formulation errors and pauses. The results indicated that DP patients produced significantly more pauses within utterances, and had more utterances with pauses compared to NDP patients and HCs (p = <.05), who performed similarly to each other. Word, speaking rate and formulation errors variables were not significantly different between the patient groups (p > .05). The findings suggest that depressive symptoms may have a specific relationship to speech pauses, and support the potential future use of speech pause assessments as an alternative and objective depression rating and monitoring tool.
抑郁症是一种常见且使人衰弱的精神疾病，与悲伤和消极情绪相关，并且常常与其他精神疾病共病，如精神分裂症。目前，抑郁症状主要通过临床访谈进行评估，不过，还有其他行为指标正在作为更客观的抑郁症状评估方法进行研究。本研究旨在通过比较23名有临床显著抑郁症状的精神分裂症/分裂情感性障碍患者（DP组）、19名无抑郁症状的精神分裂症/分裂情感性障碍患者（NDP组）和22名无精神病史的健康对照者（HC组）的言语，评估使用定量言语参数评估抑郁症的效用。对参与者的音频记录进行转录和分析，以提取五种言语变量：话语、单词、语速、表达错误和停顿。结果表明，与NDP组患者和HC组相比，DP组患者在话语中产生的停顿明显更多，且有停顿的话语更多（p =<.05），而NDP组患者和HC组之间表现相似。患者组之间的单词、语速和表达错误变量没有显著差异（p >.05）。研究结果表明，抑郁症状可能与言语停顿存在特定关系，并支持未来将言语停顿评估作为一种替代性的客观抑郁评分和监测工具的潜在用途。
