Using AI explainable models and handwriting/drawing tasks for psychological well-being

This study addresses the increasing threat to Psychological Well-Being (PWB) posed by Depression, Anxiety, and Stress conditions. Machine learning methods have shown promising results for several psychological conditions. However, the lack of transparency in existing models impedes practical application. The study aims to develop explainable machine learning models for depression, anxiety and stress prediction, focusing on features extracted from tasks involving handwriting and drawing.

Two hundred patients completed the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21) and performed seven tasks related to handwriting and drawing. Extracted features, encompassing pressure, stroke pattern, time, space, and pen inclination, were used to train the explainable-by-design Entropy-based Logic Explained Network (e-LEN) model, employing first-order logic rules for explanation. Performance comparison was performed with XGBoost, enhanced by the SHAP explanation method.

The trained models achieved notable accuracy in predicting depression (0.749 ±0.089), anxiety (0.721 ±0.088), and stress (0.761 ±0.086) through 10-fold cross-validation (repeated 20 times). The e-LEN model’s logic rules facilitated clinical validation, uncovering correlations with existing clinical literature. While performance remained consistent for depression and anxiety on an independent test dataset, a slight degradation was observed for stress prediction in the test task.