Discriminative Power of Handwriting and Drawing Features in Depression

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychiatry
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Depression detection relies on subjective assessments, leading to diagnostic delays.
• Objective, noninvasive biomarkers for depression are needed.
• Handwriting and drawing offer potential quantitative indicators.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate handwriting and drawing features for automatic depression detection.
• To identify quantitative, noninvasive indicators of depression.
• To evaluate an online approach for dynamic performance assessment.

Main Methods:

• An online approach using a digitalized tablet to record handwriting/drawing.
• Collected data on five features: pressure, time, ductus, space, and pen inclination.
• Compared features between healthy controls and clinically diagnosed depression patients.

Main Results:

• Features including time, ductus, space, and pen inclination significantly discriminated between depressed and non-depressed subjects.
• Pressure was not a significant differentiator.
• Depression was found to impact various writing/drawing functionalities.

Conclusions:

• Handwriting/drawing tasks show promise as supportive tools for depression diagnosis.
• Objective feature analysis can reduce diagnostic times and inform treatment.
• This method offers a novel, noninvasive approach to complement existing diagnostic tools.