Time-Aware Early Risk Detection (T-ERDE): A Novel Clinically-Grounded Metric for Mental Health Monitoring

Resumen

Early detection of mental health risks on digital platforms is essential for enabling timely interventions. However, existing metrics such as Early Risk Detection Error (ERDE) assess detection latency by message count rather than real time, misaligning with clinical priorities that depend on the temporal dynamics of risk. We propose Time-Aware Early Risk Detection Error (T-ERDE), a metric that replaces message-count penalties with temporal cost functions based on days elapsed since the first user interaction. T-ERDE preserves compatibility with existing metrics while offering a more clinically meaningful and equitable evaluation. Experiments on the mentalRiskES (Spanish) and eRisk (English) datasets demonstrate that T-ERDE provides more accurate and relevant assessments, better capturing intervention urgency and reducing biases linked to user activity volume.