Speech features as potential objective assessment indicators in schizophrenia patients with violence-related symptoms

Schizophrenia is a chronic mental disorder characterized by impairments that can significantly disrupt daily functioning, particularly in speech and language. Speech features serve as valuable indicators of mental disorders. This study aimed to identify potential speech features that reflect the clinical symptoms, particularly violence-related symptoms in patients with schizophrenia.

The present study enrolled 25 schizophrenia patients with violent behaviors, 25 schizophrenia patients without violent behaviors and 25 healthy controls. Psychiatric scales were used to assess symptom severity. Participants completed a standardized reading task consisting of numbers, ancient poems, nursery rhymes, and weather forecasts. Speech features were extracted using Praat, including fundamental frequency (F0), formant frequencies (F1-F4), formant bandwidths (B1-B4) and energy.

Significant differences were observed in MOAS, HCR-CV, PANSS, and BPRS scores among the three groups, indicating variations in violent behavior and the severity of psychiatric symptoms. After adjusting for years of education, age, and gender, F0, F1, F2, F3, F4, B1, B3 and B4 differed significantly among the three groups. However, LSD post-hoc comparisons revealed no significant difference between patients with and without violent behaviors. After partial correlations analysis, F0, F2, F3, B1, B2 and B4 showed significant correlations with certain psychiatric scale scores.

These preliminary findings suggest that fundamental frequency, partial formant frequencies and bandwidths could be potential indicators in schizophrenia. Some speech features, particularly F0, could be promising markers for violence-related symptoms in schizophrenia patients.