Unimodal and multimodal techniques for depression diagnosis: a comprehensive survey

Depression is a common and major mental health condition that affects individuals across all age groups and any backgrounds, severely reducing their physical, emotional, and cognitive functioning. It goes beyond typical mood swings and requires a timely and accurate diagnosis to prevent severe consequences such as suicidal tendencies, self-harm, and long-term mental decline. The improving performance of deep learning and machine learning techniques has significantly enhanced the speed and accuracy of depression diagnosis using both unimodal and multimodal features. This comprehensive study gives a complete overview of the unimodal and multimodal methods used to diagnose depression in its early stages. Additionally, this survey summarizes the dataset, methods, and limitations of previous work presented in the domain of depression diagnosis and serves as a suitable reference for future analysis.