Medidas Diretas e Indiretas da Depressão: Contextos Históricos e Tecnologias Atuais

The present theoretical study analyzes indirect and direct behavior measures in assessing depression. It presents a behaviorist conception of psychopathology and how this perspective diff ers from that given by Psychiatry. It explores how these concepts guide the development of diff erent measures to assess depression. Furthermore, it explores the advantages and disadvantages of direct and indirect measures, and presents an overview of the historical and operational contexts that favored the predominance of self-report measures for assessing depression. It presents some responses adopted as direct measures to assess depression, giving special emphasis to aspects of verbal behaviors, such as speech speed, pauses, duration of pauses, latency, tone of voice, emotionality of speech, and lexical diversity. It also points out that the advancement of technologies can facilitate a resumption in the investigation of direct measures and the problems related to the uncritical use of artifi cial intelligence as a tool for distinguishing depressive/depressed and non-depressed patterns. It also highlights how the predominant use of indirect behavioral measures can represent a limitation in ranking evidence-based psychotherapies. Keywords: Depression, direct measures, indirect measures, behavior, verbal behavior, assessment