How to reap the benefits of language for psychiatry

Abstract

Our aim is to find accurate and valid markers for diagnosis, prognosis, and the monitoring of treatment to improve outcome for patients with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. This search has led us into the disciplines of computational linguistics and artificial intelligence, as automatic analysis of spoken language may provide useful markers for psychiatry. Together with our language team at UMC Groningen and with great colleagues around the globe, we intend to push this field forward and provide tools that can support service users in self-monitoring and help clinicians with diagnosis, treatment monitoring and risk prediction.