Towards Interpretable Depression Detection: Linking Acoustic Features to DSM-5 Indicators

Abstract:Depression affects millions worldwide, yet diagnosis relies on subjective self-reports that may miss authentic behavior. This paper presents an approach linking speech acoustics to DSM-5 depressive-behavior indicators through a transparent Linkage Framework. Unlike black-box models, the framework explicitly maps acoustic features (pitch variability, pauses, speech tempo) to clinical indicators, enabling interpretable, indicator-level outputs. The system runs locally on commodity hardware (HW) to preserve privacy. Preliminary evaluation on DAIC-WOZ shows directionally consistent associations between acoustic features and DSM-5 indicators for psychomotor change and concentration difficulty, supporting the design rationale. Future work will validate on longitudinal datasets and extend multimodal integration while maintaining edge constraints.

Computation and Language (cs.CL); Sound (cs.SD); Audio and Speech Processing (eess.AS)

arXiv:2608.26148 [cs.CL]

(or arXiv:2608.26148v1 [cs.CL] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.26148 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

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