Seasonal Affective Disorder Speech Detection on the Base of Acoustic-Phonetic Speech Parameters

The development of an online monitoring system is shown in order to track the physiological and cognitive condition of crew members of the Concordia Research Station in Antarctica, with specific regard to depression. Follow-up studies were carried out on recorded speech material in such a way that segmental and suprasegmental speech parameters were measured for individual researchers weekly, and the changes in these parameters were detected over time. Typical acoustic-phonetic parameters were selected on the base of statistical analyses. On the base of the selected parameters, a function was developed which indicates the likelihood of depression at the examined person.