Arya VarastehNezhad

Arya VarastehNezhad, Fattaneh Taghiyareh

This study investigates whether behavioral and performance indicators derived from a Moodle-based learning management system are associated with university students' depression and anxiety in two undergraduate Computer Engineering courses. Using a quantitative observational design, LMS event logs, academic records, and self-reported Beck Depression Inventory-II and Beck Anxiety Inventory scores from 97 students were integrated. A broad set of behavioral and performance indicators spanning temporal engagement, session structure, deadline-related behavior, page-refresh patterns, and LMS navigation was extracted from raw event logs and analyzed using descriptive statistics, independent-samples t-tests with Benjamini-Hochberg FDR correction, effect sizes, and Spearman correlations; inventory scores were confirmed invariant by sex and academic year. Several indicators were significantly associated with depression and anxiety. Higher depression was associated with shifted temporal activity patterns, longer session durations, and shorter homework submission lead times, while higher anxiety was associated with concentrated temporal engagement and session-based differences. These findings suggest that routine LMS data can provide meaningful behavioral signals related to student well-being and may support earlier educational awareness of students who experience mental-health-related strain. At the same time, such indicators should be interpreted as contextual and non-diagnostic markers rather than as substitutes for clinical assessment.

Arya VarastehNezhad, Reza Tavasoli, Soroush Elyasi et al.

Depression, anxiety, and stress are widespread mental health concerns that increasingly drive individuals to seek information from Large Language Models (LLMs). This study investigates how eight LLMs (Claude Sonnet, Copilot, Gemini Pro, GPT-4o, GPT-4o mini, Llama, Mixtral, and Perplexity) reply to twenty pragmatic questions about depression, anxiety, and stress when those questions are framed for six user profiles (baseline, woman, man, young, old, and university student). The models generated 2,880 answers, which we scored for sentiment and emotions using state-of-the-art tools. Our analysis revealed that optimism, fear, and sadness dominated the emotional landscape across all outputs, with neutral sentiment maintaining consistently high values. Gratitude, joy, and trust appeared at moderate levels, while emotions such as anger, disgust, and love were rarely expressed. The choice of LLM significantly influenced emotional expression patterns. Mixtral exhibited the highest levels of negative emotions including disapproval, annoyance, and sadness, while Llama demonstrated the most optimistic and joyful responses. The type of mental health condition dramatically shaped emotional responses: anxiety prompts elicited extraordinarily high fear scores (0.974), depression prompts generated elevated sadness (0.686) and the highest negative sentiment, while stress-related queries produced the most optimistic responses (0.755) with elevated joy and trust. In contrast, demographic framing of queries produced only marginal variations in emotional tone. Statistical analyses confirmed significant model-specific and condition-specific differences, while demographic influences remained minimal. These findings highlight the critical importance of model selection in mental health applications, as each LLM exhibits a distinct emotional signature that could significantly impact user experience and outcomes.