Abstract

Mental stress is a growing global health concern, closely linked to psychological, behavioral, and physiological disorders. Accurate and early prediction of mental stress is crucial for timely interventions and improved health outcomes. Despite numerous studies leveraging machine learning (ML) techniques for stress classification, many have overlooked the integration of systematic feature selection and comprehensive model evaluation, limiting generalizability and interpretability. To address these gaps, this study proposes a robust ML-based framework that combines optimized feature selection methods-Recursive Feature Elimination (RFE), Extra Trees (ET), and Boruta-with various classification algorithms including Random Forest (RF), K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Decision Tree (DT), Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Gradient Boosting, and voting classifier. The models were evaluated using 10-fold cross-validation and ranked using the TOPSIS multi-criteria decision-making approach. The experimental results demonstrate high predictive performance across models (accuracy ≥ 0.98), with RF, DT, MLP, and Gradient Boosting achieving perfect accuracy (1.00). Among all configurations, the RF-Boruta model emerged as the most optimal (TOPSIS score: 0.914558). These findings highlight the effectiveness of combining systematic feature optimization with ML classification for accurate and interpretable stress prediction, offering valuable insights for data-driven mental health interventions.