Holzweber C, Hennenberg B, Stastka L, Kob M, Löffler-Stastka H. Voice as the sound of the psyche: Changes in prosodic characteristics in depressive patients in long-term therapy. World J Psychiatry 2026; 16(3): 113646 [DOI: 10.5498/wjp.v16.i3.113646]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Henriette Löffler-Stastka, MD, PhD, Dean, Director, Department of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Medical University Vienna, Währinger Gürtel 18-20, Vienna 1090, Austria. henriette.loeffler-stastka@meduniwien.ac.at
Research Domain of This Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Article-Type of This Article
Retrospective Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Mar 19, 2026 (publication date) through Feb 27, 2026
Times Cited of This Article
Times Cited (0)
Journal Information of This Article
Publication Name
World Journal of Psychiatry
ISSN
2220-3206
Publisher of This Article
Baishideng Publishing Group Inc, 7041 Koll Center Parkway, Suite 160, Pleasanton, CA 94566, USA
Share the Article
Holzweber C, Hennenberg B, Stastka L, Kob M, Löffler-Stastka H. Voice as the sound of the psyche: Changes in prosodic characteristics in depressive patients in long-term therapy. World J Psychiatry 2026; 16(3): 113646 [DOI: 10.5498/wjp.v16.i3.113646]
World J Psychiatry. Mar 19, 2026; 16(3): 113646 Published online Mar 19, 2026. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v16.i3.113646
Voice as the sound of the psyche: Changes in prosodic characteristics in depressive patients in long-term therapy
Christoph Holzweber, Beate Hennenberg, Laurenz Stastka, Malte Kob, Henriette Löffler-Stastka
Christoph Holzweber, Program for Clinical Academic Psychotherapeutic Propedeutics and Medical Humanities, Postgraduate Unit, Medical University Vienna, Vienna 1090, Austria
Beate Hennenberg, Department of Music Education Research and Practice, University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna 1040, Austria
Laurenz Stastka, Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich, Munich 81377, Germany
Malte Kob, Erich Thienhaus Institute, Detmold University of Music, Detmold 32756, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Henriette Löffler-Stastka, Department of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Medical University Vienna, Vienna 1090, Austria
Author contributions: Holzweber C, Kob M and Löffler-Stastka H participated in the conception and design of the study and were involved in the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; Hennenberg B was in charge of text structure and analysis; Holzweber C wrote the manuscript; Holzweber C, Löffler-Stastka H and Kob M accessed and verified the study data; Stastka L edited, translated and reviewed the manuscript. All authors critically reviewed and provided final approval of the manuscript; all authors were responsible for the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.
Institutional review board statement: This investigation was approved by the Institutional Ethics Committee of the Medical University Vienna, No. 1746/2023.
Informed consent statement: The need for patient consent was waived due to the retrospective nature of the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors declared that they have no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: Additional data are available on request from the corresponding author.
Corresponding author: Henriette Löffler-Stastka, MD, PhD, Dean, Director, Department of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Medical University Vienna, Währinger Gürtel 18-20, Vienna 1090, Austria. henriette.loeffler-stastka@meduniwien.ac.at
Received: September 1, 2025 Revised: October 6, 2025 Accepted: November 24, 2025 Published online: March 19, 2026 Processing time: 181 Days and 1.6 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: Voice is a central component in interacting with the world and a major factor in defining the relationship between patient and therapist. The complex system enabling us to produce a vocal tone is influenced by several physiological components and transports information about our feelings and emotions. Especially for patients with depression the voice is often described as muted and monotone. This research initially provides theoretical background and then focuses on the evolution and change of the fundamental vocal frequency of patients with depression during long lasting psychotherapy. Therefore, a method was created to identify the fundamental frequency of sequences of sessions recorded within the Munich psychotherapy study and applied throughout sessions of 25 individual patients. The phonetic analyses were performed using appropriate phonetic software. The output of the analysis is crosschecked with the output parameters [Beck depression inventory (BDI) for depression] and converted into a formula to calculate a ratio between fundamental frequency and BDI rating scores. Results are shown on an individual basis for specific patients and evaluated for the overall scope and in an overall context.
