Depression changes how people speak, research finds She said: "Their emotions are all over the place during this time, and that's when they're really at risk for depression. We have to reach out and figure out a way to help kids in that stage. The study examined six patients who took part in a 2007 study which investigated the relationship between depression and speech patterns. They measured depression levels each week using the Hamilton Depression Scale, a standard clinical evaluation tool to measure the severity of depression. Over the six-week course of the previous study, they had been registered as depressed some weeks and not depressed other weeks. The new study compared these patients' Hamilton scores with their speech patterns each week, and found a correlation between depression and certain acoustic properties. Further research is planned to compare speech patterns in individuals with no history of mental illness to those with depression to create an acoustic profile of depression-typical speech. The study was presented at the 168th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Indianapolis. Previous studies have shown that the risk of a mother suffering from post-natal depression could be predicted weeks before the birth of her child simply by monitoring her Twitter feed. Microsoft labs has discovered that it is possible to spot which pregnant women will struggle with motherhood based on the language they use before the birth. Intriguingly, the algorithm does not depend on the mother talking about the pregnancy or her baby, but picks up subtle verbal cues which reveal her underlying unhappiness or anxiety. General negativity in language, with a rise in the number of words like 'hate' 'miserable' 'disappointed', increased use of the word 'I' and a jump in the number of expletives are all clues that a new mum will suffer post-natal depression.