Online tool helps detect depression and other disorders

Calculator based on the Short Mood and Feelings Questionnaire was developed by researchers at CISM, an Applied Research Center supported by FAPESP.

Agência FAPESP* – Scientists affiliated with the Center for Research and Innovation in Mental Health (CISM) and four public universities have created an online calculator that helps identify symptoms of depression and other disorders. Based on users’ responses to the 13 items that make up the Short Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (SMFQ) scale, the tool indicates diagnostic probabilities.

The CISM is an Applied Research Center (ARC) funded by FAPESP and established in partnership with the Department of Psychiatry at the University of São Paulo School of Medicine (FM-USP).

The SMFQ Transdiagnostic Calculator was developed in a study analyzing data from 1,905 young people aged 14 to 23 who participated in the Brazilian High-Risk Cohort (BHRC). The project is linked to the CISM and investigates the genetic and environmental origins of mental disorders. This year, the BHRC is celebrating 15 years of activity.

The SMFQ scale, on which the calculator is based, aims to identify how a person has been feeling or acting over the previous two weeks. For questions related to emotional state, such as “I felt lonely,” “I cried a lot,” and “I did everything wrong,” the response options are “not true,” “sometimes,” and “true.” The tool created by the researchers calculates a final score based on the weight of each response provided.

The researchers calculated flexible cutoff points as a person’s symptoms increase. The score is given in T-scores, a standardized measure reflecting how far a person is from the average of a distribution – a reference point for analysis in relation to the population average. They developed the tool so that, according to the calculated score, it could reflect the probability of having a psychiatric diagnosis.

Based on the calculated score, the tool indicates the probability percentage of diagnoses such as depression, anxiety, panic/agoraphobia, and post-traumatic stress. If the final score is below the cutoff points established for comorbidities, the platform indicates an absence or very low level of symptoms.

The study that led to the creation of the calculator was conducted by Gabriele dos Santos Jobim from the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM) and published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research in August 2025. It involved researchers from USP, the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), and the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP), which are partner institutions of the CISM. The study was supervised by Mauricio Scopel Hoffmann, a professor at UFSM and a member of the CISM, and contributed to by the center’s coordinator, Eurípedes Constantino Miguel; the deputy coordinator, Luis Augusto Rohde; and BHRC researchers Rodrigo Affonseca Bressan; Pedro Mario Pan; and Giovanni Abrahão Salum.

A unique feature of the research is that the calculator incorporates Item Response Theory (IRT), a statistical approach that considers each item to have a different weight based on its difficulty and discrimination, thus generating a factorial score. According to Hoffmann, IRT provides a more accurate assessment than Classical Test Theory (CTT), which makes an estimate based on the sum of points for each item.

The online calculator is free and can help healthcare professionals in clinical practice, particularly in low- and middle-income countries like Brazil, where disorder detection is inadequate. The tool is available in Portuguese and English and democratizes access to sophisticated statistical methods.

“By integrating a symptom calculator into clinical practice, healthcare professionals can achieve greater efficiency, as the tool automates data analysis, saving time and resources,” Hoffmann says. “It can help healthcare professionals adjust their assessments based on the likelihood of specific diagnoses, that is, it assists in estimating the probability of a diagnosis. This contributes to the personalization of mental healthcare,” the professor explains.

The article “Clinical properties of the short mood and feelings questionnaire: development of a free calculator based on the Brazilian high-risk cohort study” can be read at www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022395625005059. 

The SMFQ Transdiagnostic Calculator can be accessed at mheg.shinyapps.io/mfq-score-main/. 

* With information from Mainary Nascimento from the CISM