Chief of Service in the Department of Psychiatry at Shatin Hospital and Prince of Wales Hospital
Director of Sleep Assessment Unit at Shatin Hospital
A cross-disciplinary research team at CUHK has launched what is set to become Hong Kong’s largest adolescent sleep and mental health study — an ambitious project that uses artificial intelligence to detect early signs of emotional distress by monitoring how well teenagers sleep.
In July 2025, the team’s study, “Sleep and Circadian Rhythm: Potential Window for Prevention of Mental Disorders in Adolescents”, received over HK$67.6 million from the Research Grants Council (RGC) as part of its Theme-based Research Scheme. Led by Professor Wing Yun-kwok of the Department of Psychiatry, the project brings together colleagues across eight different departments from CUHK and the University of Hong Kong.
At the heart of the project is an AI-powered app that can monitor sleep and circadian issues among adolescents and, in turn, flag high-risk individuals who may be developing mental health problems. The team has begun inviting students from secondary schools across Hong Kong to join their two-year research project, with an eventual goal of reaching 6,000 participants — making this the city’s most comprehensive scientific survey of teenager sleep.
To sleep, perchance to get well
Sleep consumes a third of our lives, yet we understand surprisingly little about it — especially how it affects developing teenage brains. Our sleep quality is reflected in a wide range of biological markers: our facial expressions, voices and even the language we use are all “objective parameters that help us measure sleep quality and emotional development”, says Professor Wing.
The app catalogues signs of sleep and circadian disturbance and mood symptoms through such biological markers. The app will collect their audio, visual and language multi-modal interactions, which can reflect their emotion and wellbeing.
“Many times, we’ve discovered that when a patient with mental disorder says they’re ‘unhappy’, they’re actually expressing it through multiple modes,” says Professor Wing. With the help of large language models, the app can detect signs of emotional duress, not just in the words, but in the intonations and rhythms of the users’ interactions.
A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow
Why focus on sleep? Our brains develop throughout our entire lives, but it is during adolescence that they “rewire” most intensively. During this tumultuous period, teenagers face pressure from sources such as society and interpersonal relationships; this leaves them susceptible to developing mental disorders.
“75% of emotional and mental disorders emerge during adolescence, just as these pressures are peaking,” explains Professor Wing.
With changes in sleep patterns exacerbated by these stresses, insomnia levels can spike during adolescence, with rates doubling for boys, and increasing threefold for girls. As a result, they become vulnerable to future emotional disorders: although sleep disturbances used to be thought of as a consequence of mental health issues, Professor Wing says the two usually have a bidirectional relationship, during which insomnia can occur before mood disorder symptoms emerge.
Fighting mental health stigma
Professor Wing said there is another purpose of the research — reducing the stigma of mental health issues. With more solid evidence linking improved sleep to better mental health, they can shape public policy.
“If you talk about depression or anxiety, there’s still a lot of stigma floating around,” says Dr Rachel Chan Ngan-yin of the Department of Psychiatry. On the other hand, “if you talk about sleep, teenagers are more willing to discuss their issues. So we thought sleep would be a better entry point for us.”
Professor Wing knows that this stigma is a serious barrier to treatment. The department helped organise a government-commissioned survey conducted between 2019 and 2023, that looked into mental health in Hong Kong’s young. This survey found that 24.4 percent of children and adolescents aged 6 to 17 had experienced at least one mental health issue in the past year, with more than half of them suffering from two or more co-occurring disorders. Yet nearly half of the caregivers were unwilling to seek professional assistance — whether due to perceived stigma, unawareness of available support, or not considering the problems severe enough.
AI as a solution
A major thread throughout Professor Wing’s project is digital technology. It forms the very basis of their research, allowing patients to record and track their emotions. But ironically, it is also under investigation as a major stress factor: with all the information and commentary available on the Internet, excessive and inappropriate use can easily lead to heightened emotions, which cause more sleepless nights in children and teenagers. With children as young as eight years old getting their first digital device, it is vital that professional help follows suit.
Concern over social media’s impact on young people has reached such heights that some countries have taken drastic action. In late 2024, Australia became the first nation to legally restrict access to major social media platforms — including Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Snapchat — for users under the age of 16, a groundbreaking move that took effect in December 2025.
But the professors at CUHK are using technology in the right way. To ensure the smooth operations of the app, Professor Wing’s group teamed up with Professor Leung Kwong-sak of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. A longtime researcher into the applications of AI in medicine, Professor Leung helped the team come up with a digitised platform that could gather all the collected information in one place. Although some may be wary of AI, Professor Leung is confident about its efficacy. “If AI is used well, then it can help us make diagnoses as well as early predictions of emotional disorders.”
A tailored intervention
Once the first phase of the project has been completed, the team hope to develop precise models that accurately pinpoint the varied causes of sleep and circadian disturbances in patients, allowing them to identify the best intervention methods. This forms the second part of Professor Wing’s project.
A major benefit of this approach is that it enables the development of tailored intervention methods for individual patients. Current mental health intervention usually takes a one-size-fits-all approach, allocating a standardised treatment to those afflicted. For Professor Wing, this is less than ideal.
“Yes, early intervention helps bring down depression rates in youths by 40%, but it doesn’t necessarily work for everyone,” he says, citing a published 2025 study he did with Peking University. “Besides treatment for insomnia, maybe they also need treatments for other issues, like circadian-focused intervention.” The causes of insomnia vary between individuals, and any intervention taken needs to take each patient’s unique combination of factors into account.
“At the end of the day, we’re hoping to improve the sleep and mental health of the entire city,” says Professor Wing. “So accessibility, scalability, those are our main concerns. How can we scale up our services, so that everybody can get help, and soon? In the long term, our project plans to provide an answer.”
This article is first published in the e-newsletter "CUHK in Focus".
