# Candidate Generation and Definition-Guided Verification for Sentence-Level Depression Symptom Recognition

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.01833 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.01833/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 14 of its 42 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Sep 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [SimCSE: Simple Contrastive Learning of Sentence Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08821/) (2021)
- [Large Language Models Encode Clinical Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.13138/) (2022)
- [MedGemma Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05201/) (2025)
- [Benchmarking Zero-shot Text Classification: Datasets, Evaluation and Entailment Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.00161/) (2019)
- [MentalBERT: Publicly Available Pretrained Language Models for Mental Healthcare](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.15621/) (2021)
- [SMHD: A Large-Scale Resource for Exploring Online Language Usage for Multiple Mental Health Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.05258/) (2018)
- [Large Language Models in Mental Health Care: a Scoping Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02984/) (2024)
- [Depression Detection on Social Media with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.10750/) (2024)
- [Challenges of Large Language Models for Mental Health Counseling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.13857/) (2023)
- [MedREQAL: Examining Medical Knowledge Recall of Large Language Models via Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.05845/) (2024)
- [MentalGLM Series: Explainable Large Language Models for Mental Health Analysis on Chinese Social Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.10323/) (2024)
- [ReDSM5: A Reddit Dataset for DSM-5 Depression Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.03399/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Sentence-level recognition of depression symptoms is challenging because similar expressions can differ in symptom relevance, and language-model inference is insufficiently grounded in diagnostic definitions. This study proposes a two-stage framework separating symptom-candidate generation from definition-grounded verification. A contrastively fine-tuned sentence encoder generates a symptom candidate per sentence, and a fine-tuned language model verifies whether the candidate is present or absent using the sentence, its context, and a candidate-specific diagnostic definition, checking its judgment against that definition before answering. Evaluated against encoder, inference-based, medical, and general LLM baselines and a matched single-stage supervised classifier, the proposed pipeline attains the best accuracy and F1 scores of all methods, with rationales matching expert-authored annotations. A preliminary clinical audit indicates moderate alignment with diagnostic definitions, with explanation quality strongly dependent on prediction correctness. The results support decomposing symptom recognition into candidate generation and definition-grounded verification, though performance remains limited for rare categories.