Zeng Y, Yang J, Kuang L. Bridging the gap between subjective and objective measures: A multimodal protocol for adolescent depression detection. World J Psychiatry 2026; 16(4): 116428 [DOI: 10.5498/wjp.v16.i4.116428]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Li Kuang, Chief Physician, Professor, Department of Psychology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, No. 1 Youyi Road, Yuzhong District, Chongqing 400016, China. kuangli0388@126.com
Research Domain of This Article
Psychology, Clinical
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Observational Study
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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/
Apr 19, 2026 (publication date) through Mar 30, 2026
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Publication Name
World Journal of Psychiatry
ISSN
2220-3206
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Baishideng Publishing Group Inc, 7041 Koll Center Parkway, Suite 160, Pleasanton, CA 94566, USA
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Zeng Y, Yang J, Kuang L. Bridging the gap between subjective and objective measures: A multimodal protocol for adolescent depression detection. World J Psychiatry 2026; 16(4): 116428 [DOI: 10.5498/wjp.v16.i4.116428]
World J Psychiatry. Apr 19, 2026; 16(4): 116428 Published online Apr 19, 2026. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v16.i4.116428
Bridging the gap between subjective and objective measures: A multimodal protocol for adolescent depression detection
Yan Zeng, Jian Yang, Li Kuang
Yan Zeng, Department of Psychology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400010, China
Jian Yang, Department of Gastroenterology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400016, China
Jian Yang, Department of Gastroenterology, Changdu People’s Hospital of Xizang, Changdu 854000, Xizang Autonomous Region, China
Li Kuang, Department of Psychology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400016, China
Author contributions: Zeng Y wrote the original manuscript; Zeng Y and Yang J performed the literature search and analyzed the data; Yang J and Kuang L edited the final manuscript; Kuang L conceptualized and designed the research; All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Supported by Chongqing Science and Health Joint Medical Research Project, No. 2021MSXM034; Natural Science Foundation of Xizang Autonomous Region, No. XZ2024ZR-ZY100(Z); Program for Youth Innovation in Future Medicine, Chongqing Medical University, China, No. W0138; and the Education and Teaching Reform Project of the First Clinical College of Chongqing Medical University, No. CMER202305.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University (approval No. 2023-6).
Informed consent statement: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Data sharing statement: All supporting data underlying this study are available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author.
Corresponding author: Li Kuang, Chief Physician, Professor, Department of Psychology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, No. 1 Youyi Road, Yuzhong District, Chongqing 400016, China. kuangli0388@126.com
Received: November 12, 2025 Revised: December 7, 2025 Accepted: January 14, 2026 Published online: April 19, 2026 Processing time: 139 Days and 4.6 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: Current screening for adolescent depression relies heavily on subjective questionnaires. Therefore, we developed a multimodal protocol combining the Chinese Secondary School Students Depression Scale with objective facial and vocal data to improve detection. Our analysis showed that extreme gradient boosting outperformed other machine learning models under multimodal and bimodal settings, achieving superior performance across multiple metrics. Statistical comparisons confirmed that the multimodal extreme gradient boosting model significantly surpassed its bimodal counterpart, demonstrating the advantage of integrating subjective scales with objective data to enhance the accuracy and robustness of depression screening in Chinese adolescents. Further validation in diverse populations is warranted.
