Cultural validation of the RCADS and use of ensemble learning for symptom profiling of anxiety and depression
Overall, the study shows that all 47 individual items in RCADS are culturally significant for the screening of anxiety and depressive disorders in Pakistani populations, however, the subscales for SAD and OCD warrant some modifications due to low Cronbach's alpha values. The results of ML algorithms yield satisfactory to exceptional metrics, suggesting that these models may be adapted as efficient screening support systems in clinical settings. However, external validation of the models on unseen data is necessary before practical implementation.
Authors
- Syeda Aneela Zahra Shamsi
- Maria Hasan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7169-7253)
- Mehwish Zaman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4105-9477)
- Qurrat Ulain Hamdan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0618-6796)
- Zamir Hussain
- Haseeba Afzal
Institutions
- University of Padua (IT)
- Rawalpindi Medical University (PK)
- National University of Science and Technology (ZW)
- National University of Sciences and Technology (PK)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Frontiers in Psychiatry
- Published
- 2026-02-27
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2026.1758503
- Primary Topic
- Digital Mental Health Interventions
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Università degli Studi di Padova
- National University of Sciences and Technology