Mental health screening that speaks Pidgin, Hausa and Yoruba: Nigeria's GENSCORE project begins

A screening question only works if the person answering understands it — in the language they actually think in. In Ibadan, a Nigerian research collaboration has launched GENSCORE, a project to build and validate artificial-intelligence-supported screening for depression and anxiety in Pidgin, Hausa and Yoruba, rather than relying on translated English questionnaires. The team — spanning the Slum and Rural Health Initiative, the University of Ibadan, the Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital in Yaba and Imperial College London, with Wellcome support — will build a multilingual dataset and adapted tools called GenPHQ and GenGAD, combining spoken responses with self-reported text. The researchers are careful: this is a research launch, with professional oversight and ethics built in — not a finished product, and not a replacement for a clinician.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation