PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – In the fight to keep mental health manageable, a new entrant is showing promising results.
This is an app that uses science to help you understand your situation.
You can tell someone how you feel, and it may help you feel less depressed. But now there's an app that lets you hear your voice.
In a new “There's an app for that” initiative, folks at Pittsburgh's Cognitive Behavioral Institute are testing an app that detects mental health issues by listening to your voice.
“We found it to be fairly accurate,” said Dr. Lindsey Beneske of the Pittsburgh Cognitive Behavioral Institute. ”[It] I may not know the reason, but I can tell you that there has been a change.”
Dr. Beneski said the app was provided by Sonde Health and was tested on 100 local psychiatric outpatients over a four-week period as the app assessed subjects' vocal biomarkers. .
Users launch the app, record themselves for 30 seconds about the topic they're asked to talk about, or whatever they want to talk about, and the app listens to it.
”[It listens for] “Rhythm, prosody, voice volume, and all those data taken together indicate whether a patient's mental health functioning is increasing or decreasing,” Dr. Benesky said.
In one patient's case, she didn't like that the app told her her score was low, but said she felt fine but didn't understand it until a follow-up conversation with Dr. Benesky.
“The more we talked about her week, the more I realized that some things were actually weighing on her,” she explained.
However, Dr. Benesky cautions that while the app is in no way a replacement for treatment, it may be helpful for those who are not already receiving treatment.
This app is also tailored to provide suggestions.
“Here are some things you can try: journaling here, deep breathing there, and other strategies,” Dr. Benesky said. “Again, this is not a replacement for therapy, but I think it starts to give people ideas and things to think about.”
The Sonde Health app is free, and what you say about the app and its ratings reflect only your eyes.
As mentioned earlier, biomarkers can be detected in your voice that can indicate that something may be weighing you down.
