Identifying Psychological Symptoms Based on Facial Movements.

Background

Many methods have been proposed to automatically identify the presence of mental illness, but these have mostly focused on one specific mental illness. In some non-professional scenarios, it would be more helpful to understand an individual's mental health status from all perspectives.

Methods

We recruited 100 participants. Their multi-dimensional psychological symptoms of mental health were evaluated using the Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL-90) and their facial movements under neutral stimulation were recorded using Microsoft Kinect. We extracted the time-series characteristics of the key points as the input, and the subscale scores of the SCL-90 as the output to build facial prediction models. Finally, the convergent validity, discriminant validity, criterion validity, and the split-half reliability were respectively assessed using a multitrait-multimethod matrix and correlation coefficients.

Results

The correlation coefficients between the predicted values and actual scores were 0.26 and 0.42 (P < 0.01), which indicated good criterion validity. All models except depression had high convergent validity but low discriminant validity. Results also indicated good levels of split-half reliability for each model [from 0.516 (hostility) to 0.817 (interpersonal sensitivity)] (P < 0.001).

Conclusion

The validity and reliability of facial prediction models were confirmed for the measurement of mental health based on the SCL-90. Our research demonstrated that fine-grained aspects of mental health can be identified from the face, and provided a feasible evaluation method for multi-dimensional prediction models.