Mental Health in Tech: Analysis of Workplace Risk Factors and Impact of COVID-19

Abstract

The psychological, emotional and social well-being of an individual determines their ability to contribute and function as a social member. Several studies over the years have proven that an alarming number of people live with mental illnesses, of which only a fraction is documented. Studies conducted by Open Sourcing Mental Illness (OSMI) organization have indicated that these figures are much higher in the tech industry. We present an analysis of patterns and infer contributory factors for mental illness in the tech industry, to aid in the early detection and assess employees’ risk of diagnosis. Towards this end, the study comprises a detailed analysis, models for prediction of diagnosis, risk-based clustering and investigation into existing literature on factors contributing to mental illness. In addition to this, we have attempted to understand the impact of Covid-19 through analyzing trends of the factors influencing mental health, pre- and post-pandemic. We conclude with an insight to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global mental health and the actions taken in the workplace to mitigate this.

Assessing the Reliability of Machine Learning Models Applied to the Mental Health Domain Using Explainable AI

“…A search for "Mental Health in Tech Survey" in Google Scholar shows scores of articles that apparently have used the OSMH datasets. A few of them [4,5] applied machine learning to predict the mental health of employees mainly working in the tech/IT sector. One of them [6] attempted to interpret the model using SHAP and Permutation Importance, but no conclusions were drawn.…”