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Kinect can now be used to diagnose depression with 90% accuracy?

thescorpionthefrog.com

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Re: Kinect can now be used to diagnose depression with 90% accuracy?

#3
This is interesting to me because... is there even a scientific definition of depression yet? Such that, if you have a defined list of symptoms, you are definitely depressed, and if you don't, you are definitely not depressed?

If not, we're at best talking about a magnitudinal thing or a probability thing. Like a Bayesian thing where each symptom's presence updates the probability of the person being depressed, which is turn based off of a database of previous cases of diagnosed depression and what symptoms they had.

But even that may be circular, ultimately. It could just as well be that depression is a vague category of similar symptoms that each come from a wide variety of scientific causes.

This is not to be mistaken for saying it doesn't exist or that it's all in someone's head - it's more just to say that if someone has depression, they have something that may deserve treatment and sensitivity, but that it's something that we still do not know exactly how to describe or diagnose, and so therefore we will just call it "depression" in the meantime. But what if we've sort of collectively forgotten the "in the meantime" part?

Re: Kinect can now be used to diagnose depression with 90% accuracy?

#4
Actually, I'm looking to do something like this in related applications. Just need to find time to go through the kinect capabilities....my own unit has been gathering dust on my shelf for a while. Anyone in southern california (LA area or within driving distance) want to talk about this?

Re: Kinect can now be used to diagnose depression with 90% accuracy?

#5
"SimSensei can work out whether you’re exhibiting signs that indicate depression"

Im not sure I totally buy it - Im sure it can pick up the signs with 90% accuracy but how often do the signs actually correspond to a clinically depressed person. Just because your in a down mood at one moment does not mean you are depressed - depression is just a lot more complex than that. Im not sure that this would be of much use in accurate diagnosis although it seems like pretty interesting tech.

Re: Kinect can now be used to diagnose depression with 90% accuracy?

#7

This is interesting to me because... is there even a scientific definition of depression yet? Such that, if you have a defined list of symptoms, you are definitely depressed, and if you don't, you are definitely not depressed? If not, we're at best talking about a magnitudinal thing or a probability thing. Like a Bayesian thing where each symptom's presence updates the probability of the person being depressed, which…

There's DSM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manu...

Worth a look if you're interested in how mental disorders are diagnosed.

Re: Kinect can now be used to diagnose depression with 90% accuracy?

#9
post #5

"SimSensei can work out whether you’re exhibiting signs that indicate depression" Im not sure I totally buy it - Im sure it can pick up the signs with 90% accuracy but how often do the signs actually correspond to a clinically depressed person. Just because your in a down mood at one moment does not mean you are depressed - depression is just a lot more complex than that. Im not sure that this would be of much use in…

Depends on the kind of questions they're asking, really.

As someone with relatively mild depression, you'd never know it in normal conversation. But if you ask directly about symptoms and I give honest answers, both the answers themselves and my body language will probably give you a pretty good indication.

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