Multimodal Identification of Depressive Symptoms in the Elderly

Launched by WUHAN MENTAL HEALTH CENTRE · Aug 5, 2025

Keywords

ClinConnect Summary

This clinical trial is studying a new way to better identify signs of depression in older adults. Instead of just using traditional questionnaires, the study will use artificial intelligence (AI) to look at multiple types of information at once—like facial expressions, voice, the words people use, and body movements. By combining all these clues, the researchers hope to create a more accurate tool for recognizing depression, which can sometimes be missed or misunderstood with current methods.

The study is looking for participants who are 60 years or older and live in the community (not in hospitals or care homes) for at least six months. Participants need to be able to read, write, and understand instructions well enough to communicate with the researchers and complete the study tasks. People who have serious illnesses, dementia, are currently taking antidepressants, or have had recent suicidal thoughts will not be eligible. If you join, you can expect to take part in assessments that may involve talking, answering questions, and possibly having your facial expressions and movements observed. This study isn’t recruiting yet, but if you’re interested, it’s important to know that it aims to improve how depression is detected in older adults using new technology.

Gender

ALL

Eligibility criteria

• Inclusion Criteria:
• • Elderly individuals aged 60 years or older.
• • Residents of the community (with residence time of more than 6 months).
• • Possessing certain reading, writing and comprehension skills, being able to communicate with researchers without obstacles, and being able to independently complete the measurement of various indicators or, although unable to independently fill out the questionnaire, being able to independently make evaluations of the questionnaire items.
• • Those who have given informed consent.
• Exclusion Criteria:
• • Those who meet the diagnostic criteria for cognitive impairment (dementia) as stipulated in DSM-5, and/or who suffer from severe physical diseases (such as advanced cancer, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, etc.).
• • Those who are undergoing antidepressant treatment.
• • Elderly individuals who have had suicidal thoughts in any psychological assessment, should be referred to the psychological hotline platform in Wuhan.