Pakistan is a 3rd world developing country. Here people suffer a lot of problems related to their day to day lives and also related to their future paradigms. The socio-economic life of the country is not so friendly to ease the living of a common man here. From among different socio-economic factors education is a leading factor of stress among the students in particular and children in general. Stress during education can lead to mental distress and have a negative impact on cognitive functioning and learning. Hence, there is a need to quantify the anxiety, depression and its associated factors among students for their counseling and rehabilitation. Anxiety and stress result in a disorder that can deteriorate a student’s integrative progress socially, emotionally and cognitively. If not measured, they can lead to undesirable prolonged effects of depressive disorders.

Anxiety is an outcome variable for the stimulus of stress. It is a natural response of body under the state of stress indicated with the feeling of fear. When the feelings of anxiety are not disappearing but rather becoming stronger with the course of time then this leads to a medical problem namely anxiety disorder. Difference between anxiety and its disorder is that, in the latter case the feeling of fear starts interfering with everyday life, glooms the personality and can lead to other psychological issues, like panic disorders, phobia and/ or physical issues which may be as simple as for example dryness of mouth, sweatiness, restlessness, dizziness, irregular or rapid breathing or complicated as increased heart rates, losing coordination between brain and the actions performed, loss of concentration, insomnia etc.Environmental factors, brain chemistry and genetics have their own share in building anxiety

Being in the state of anxiety is basically an emotional feeling, hence there is no direct measure of it. However, literature study shows that instruments like survey questionnaires, observing the personal interactions and dispositions and measuring physical symptoms (e.g. heart beats, pulse rates, muscular contractions etc.) can be used as significant methods of measures so that treatment can be provided if needed.

The purpose of this study is to estimate the prevalence of anxiety, depression and their associated risk factors among students of public and private sector schools, colleges and universities in the four states of Pakistan.

Hence we propose to develop a novel and formal procedure to compute anxiety that can be applied clinically and at institutional level.

Measuring anxiety is a very complex problem; on one hand, there are quantifiable metrics to verify the state of anxiety e.g. heart beats, muscular contractions, pulse rates etc., and on the other hand, there are qualitative properties to deal with. Taking inspiration from the tremendous advancements in the field of statistics and AI we want to develop a hybrid learning approach using both quantitative and qualitative metrics.

In order to measure anxiety, there could be two scenarios,  a situation that automatically exists to measure it, i.e. the correlational research or creating a situation to measure it, i.e. the experimental research. It is not possible to always have naturally existing anxiety situations. Therefore, we propose to use the second method by developing a feasible experimental setup so that anxiety can be measured, predicted and later on classified.

Our hypothesis is to use the idea of “mood induction” to measure the reactions of different body reactions as a direct measure of anxiety.

Our target is to not only come up with theoretical results, but also, practical solutions for the clinical and health science. That is why we will be working in collaboration with medical doctors.

They will help us in understanding practical considerations, as well as, verifying the effectiveness and efficiency of our solution. As they are the end-users who understand the human body systems, their feedback will be vital to the success of our research.