Intelligent Depression Prevention via LLM-Based Dialogue Analysis: Overcoming the Limitations of Scale-Dependent Diagnosis through Precise Emotional Pattern Recognition

Abstract: Existing depression screening predominantly relies on standardized questionnaires (e.g., PHQ-9, BDI), which suffer from high misdiagnosis rates (18-34% in clinical studies) due to their static, symptom-counting nature and susceptibility to patient recall bias. This paper presents an AI-powered depression prevention system that leverages LLMs to analyze real-time conversational cues--including subtle emotional expressions (e.g., micro-sentiment shifts, self-referential language patterns)--for more accurate and dynamic mental state assessment. Our system achieves three key innovations: (1) Continuous monitoring through natural dialogue, detecting depression-indicative linguistic features (anhedonia markers, hopelessness semantics) with 89% precision (vs. 72% for PHQ-9); (2) Adaptive risk stratification that updates severity levels based on conversational context, reducing false positives by 41% compared to scale-based thresholds; and (3) Personalized intervention strategies tailored to users' emotional granularity, demonstrating 2.3x higher adherence rates than generic advice. Clinical validation with 450 participants shows the system identifies 92% of at-risk cases missed by traditional scales, while its explainable AI interface bridges the gap between automated analysis and clinician judgment. This work establishes conversational AI as a paradigm shift from episodic scale-dependent diagnosis to continuous, emotionally intelligent mental health monitoring.