News Article of VA Creates Audio Data System to Diagnose Mental Health More than 700 000 people die by suicide every year — and veterans are 1.5 times more likely to die by suicide than non-veterans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 46% of people who die by suicide had a known mental health condition, a statistic that is likely an undercount due to undiagnosed or untreated mental illness.

The ability to diagnose mental health problems and start treatment sooner could lower suicide rates among veterans and civilians alike, but accurate diagnosis can be difficult. For example, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) — a common psychiatric disorder among veterans — is currently diagnosed by patients self-reporting their symptoms – usually via questionnaires or interviews with their clinician. This is problematic for two reasons: These written or verbal descriptions may not accurately reflect the patent’s mental state, and

Clinicians’ interpretations of interviews can be subjective, inaccurate, or unquantifiable. Conducting multiple interviews can increase accuracy but are prohibitively expensive.

Either of these current diagnostic techniques can lead to veterans being over or underdiagnosed.

Fortunately, the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs and an academic affiliate have developed an innovative system that diagnoses mental health with audio waves . The VA system, developed at the VA Boston Health Care System, Jamaica Plain Campus , performs the following steps to diagnose: Receives audio input.

Converts the audio input into a text string.

Identifies a speaker associated with the text string.

Determines a predefined audio characteristic of a plurality of predefined audio characteristics.

Identifies an emotion corresponding to the portion of the audio input. Generates a set of structured data based on the text string, the speaker, the predefined audio characteristic, and the identified emotion. Based on these characteristics, the audio system can identify the emotion behind the speech, like happiness or sadness.The VA audio system is available for licensing and commercialization, subject to consultation with the academic affiliate. As the national partner for technology transfer for the VA and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), TechLink […]

VA Creates Audio Data System to Diagnose Mental Health