Validity of Mind Monitoring System as a Mental Health Indicator using Voice

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T Article history: Received: 06 April, 2017 Accepted: 28 April, 2017 Online: 17 May, 2017 We have been developing a method of evaluating the mental health condition of a person based on the sound of their voice. Currently, we have applied this technology to create a smartphone application that shows the vitality and the mental activity as mental health condition indices. Using voice to measure one’s mental health condition is a non-invasive method. Moreover, this application can be used continually through a smartphone call. Unlike a periodic checkup every year, it could be used for monitoring on a daily basis. The purpose of this study is to compare the vitality index to the widely used Beck depression inventory (BDI) and to evaluate its validity. This experiment was conducted at the Center of Innovation Program of the University of Tokyo with 50 employees of one corporation as participants between early December 2015 and early February 2016. Each participant was given a smartphone with our application that recorded his/her voice automatically during calls. In addition, the participants had to read and record a fixed phrase daily. The BDI test was conducted at the beginning of the experimental period. The vitality index was calculated based on the voice data collected during the first two weeks of the experiment and was considered as the vitality index at the time when the BDI test was conducted. When the vitality and the mental activity indicators were compared to BDI score, we found that there was a negative correlation between the BDI score and these indices. Additionally, these indices were a useful method to discriminate a participant of high risk of disease with a high BDI score. And the mental activity index shows a higher performance than the vitality index.