Three examples of speech from a person with bipolar disorder. The rows show one second each of manic, euthymic (normal), and depressed speech. The colored rectangles show various features extracted from the speech, where color indicates the amplitude of that feature for that speaker. The 10 features measure qualities of the person’s voice like pitch, variability of pitch, energy, and how pressured the speech is (but not in a one-to-one correspondence with those features). The picture shows that features 1 and 9 are higher in manic speech and lower in euthymic, while features 5 and 10 are elevated in depressed speech.Melvin McInnis, Emily Mower Provost, and Zahi Karam
For most of us, it’s easy to overlook life’s changeability. Each day’s events unfold with enough regularity that we believe we are on a stable path, more or less protected from calamity. But for people with bipolar disorder, the days are tinged with uncertainty. Life as they know it could change completely within a month or two, as they are caught in the rush of a manic episode or the suffocating hopelessness of depression. People suddenly lose jobs, relationships, and good reputations, and the damage is lasting.
The power to interrupt their cruel cycle…
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