# Context Matters: Vision-Based Depression Detection Comparing Classical and Deep Approaches

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.10344 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10344/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 4 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Apr 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Representation Learning and Identity Adversarial Training for Facial Behavior Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11243/) (2024)
- [Fairness and Bias Mitigation in Computer Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.02464/) (2024)
- [Variation of Gender Biases in Visual Recognition Models Before and After Finetuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.07615/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The classical approach to detecting depression from vision emphasizes interpretable features, such as facial expression, and classifiers such as the Support Vector Machine (SVM). With the advent of deep learning, there has been a shift in feature representations and classification approaches. Contemporary approaches use learnt features from general-purpose vision models such as VGGNet to train machine learning models. Little is known about how classical and deep approaches compare in depression detection with respect to accuracy, fairness, and generalizability, especially across contexts. To address these questions, we compared classical and deep approaches to the detection of depression in the visual modality in two different contexts: Mother-child interactions in the TPOT database and patient-clinician interviews in the Pitt database. In the former, depression was operationalized as a history of depression per the DSM and current or recent clinically significant symptoms. In the latter, all participants met initial criteria for depression per DSM, and depression was reassessed over the course of treatment. The classical approach included handcrafted features with SVM classifiers. Learnt features were turn-level embeddings from the FMAE-IAT that were combined with Multi-Layer Perceptron classifiers. The classical approach achieved higher accuracy in both contexts. It was also significantly fairer than the deep approach in the patient-clinician context. Cross-context generalizability was modest at best for both approaches, which suggests that depression may be context-specific.