SynthesisFrontiers in digital health2026
Voice and speech as digital biomarkers of mental health: a scoping review of clinical interpretability, data collection and translational readiness.
Synthesis in Frontiers in digital health, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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3 authors.
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Abstract
Background: Voice and speech encode acoustic, linguistic, and interactional information associated with mental health. Translating these signals into clinically meaningful digital biomarkers depends not only on predictive performance but on how speech is elicited, how the target state is defined, whether findings generalize beyond the original dataset, and whether features can be measured reliably in real-world settings. Objective: To map voice, speech, language, and communication biomarkers studied across mental health outcomes and to examine three dimensions of translational readiness: clinical interpretability, evidentiary validity, and deployability. Methods: This scoping review followed Joanna Briggs Institute guidance and PRISMA-ScR. PubMed, PsycINFO, and Scopus were searched through June 18, 2026. Two reviewers independently screened records and charted data. Biomarkers were classified as directly clinically interpretable, software-derived with a perceptual correlate, or technical-only. Results: Of 1,524 records identified, 68 studies were included. Depression was examined in 56 studies (82%), followed by anxiety ( Conclusions: Voice-based mental health research identifies numerous candidate biomarkers, but translational readiness remains limited. Most evidence derives from depression and controlled speech tasks, and interpretability does not imply validity or deployability. Existing studies do not establish that candidate biomarkers remain valid in spontaneous, multispeaker, passive, or ambient clinical settings. Future work should prioritize validated outcome labels, longitudinal naturalistic capture, external validation, diverse populations, and explicit evaluation of interpretable and technical features across recording contexts.
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