A Machine Learning Framework for Automated Detection of Perceived Stress in Female Students
Kapil Gupta
Journal of Data Science and Intelligent Systems July 17, 2026 DOI: 10.47852/bonviewjdsis62028284 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Exploratory study with pre-post design Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Female students |
| Intervention | Heartfulness meditation |
| Duration | 20-week intervention |
| Topics | Meditation |
| Keywords | Mental health Stress linguistics Support vector machine Statistical analysis Mindfulness meditation Machine learning Artificial intelligence Clinical psychology Applied psychology Exploratory research Mental stress Life satisfaction Data collection Statement logic |
| Key points | Heartfulness meditation significantly reduces perceived stress and enhances satisfaction with life in female students after 20 weeks. |
Abstract
Stress is a mental state induced by difficult circumstances. COVID-19 has severely impacted the level of stress and mental health of individuals around the globe. Pharmaceutical treatment (hypnotic or sedative drugs) has shown its ineffectiveness with several unwanted side effects to reduce mental stress. Mindfulness practices have proven their potency to reduce perceived stress (PS) and enhance satisfaction with life (SWL) without any negative consequences. This study aims to detect PS in female students and study the impact of Heartfulness meditation in reducing it. In this work, statistical exploratory data analysis (EDA) is utilized to evaluate the effectiveness of Heartfulness meditation. PS and SWL scores of Week 0 and Week 20 data are recorded from two different age groups of female students and analyzed to detect stressed students using machine learning modules. The highest PS detection accuracy 66.88% and F1-score 65.30% for group-1 are obtained using the support vector machine classifier. EDA indicates that there is a significant decrease in the PS levels and an increase in the SWL after 20 weeks of Heartfulness meditation. The results of this study indicate that the practice of Heartfulness meditation offers significant advantages to female students, regardless of age. Moreover, it was found that the practice effectively reduces stress levels among the participants. Received: 18 November 2025 | Revised: 19 May 2026 | Accepted: 27 May 2026 Conflicts of Interest The author declares that he has no conflicts of interest to this work. Data Availability Statement Data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Author Contribution Statement Kapil Gupta: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization.
Comparable studies
Other non-randomized and open-label trials on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction in Relation to Quality of Life, Mood, Symptoms of Stress, and Immune Parameters in Breast and Prostate Cancer Outpatients Early-stage breast and prostate cancer patients | 2003 | Pre-post intervention study | n = 59 |
| Exploring self‐compassion and empathy in the context of mindfulness‐based stress reduction (MBSR) Community sample | 2010 | Pre-post intervention study | |
| Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Lowers Psychological Distress In Medical Students Second-year medical students | 2003 | Prospective nonrandomized cohort-controlled study | n = 302 |
| Intensive meditation training, immune cell telomerase activity, and psychological mediators. Retreat participants and matched controls | 2011 | Controlled trial with wait-list control group | n = 60 |
| The Effectiveness of Mindfulness Training for Children with ADHD and Mindful Parenting for their Parents Children aged 8-12 with ADHD and their parents | 2011 | Within-group waitlist controlled trial | n = 22 |