Classification of Employee Mental Health Disorder
Treatment With K-Nearest Neighbor Algorithm
1st Hakkun Elmunsyah
Universitas Negeri Malang
Malang, Indonesia
line 5: hakkun@um.ac.id
4th Ilham A.E. Zaeni
Universitas Negeri Malang
Malang, Indonesia
ilham.ari.ft@um.ac.id
Abstract— Mental health problems are increasingly crucial
in the workplace. These issues affect employee productivity
and accordingly it affects the company's prolificacy. To
minimize mental health issues among employees, companies
must identify factors related to employee’s mental health.
Therefore, a classification method to find out whether an
employee requires mental health treatment or not is highly
much-needed. This paper seeks to develop the application of
features selection using chi-square to the performance of the
K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) algorithm in conducting
classifications. The stages carried out were: (1) collecting data
obtained from Open Sourcing Mental Illness (OSMI), (2) data
preprocessing process (data cleaning, feature selection, data
transformation), (3) implementing the KNN algorithm in
classifying the data, and (4) evaluation process to determine
algorithm performance outcome using a confusion matrix
which generates precision, recall, and accuracy values. The
classification using the KNN algorithm obtained 87.27% of
accuracy, 84.21% of precision, and 66.7% of recall.
Accordingly, the resulting performance is more effective than
previous research. The 2.27% increase in accuracy compared
to the research conducted by Shruti Appiah in conducting
classifications using Naïve Bayes and SVM resulted in an
accuracy of 66%. To sum up, data on mental health treatment
is applicable for classification using KNN with a high degree of
accuracy.
Keywords—component, formatting, style, styling, insert (key
words)
I. INTRODUCTION (HEADING 1)
Employees play as an indispensable component in the
company—they contribute a significant influence on the
performance of a company. To carry out a production
process, the company relies highly on the employees. Due to
the considerable influence of employees in the company, it is
necessary for the company to intensely pay attention to
employees’ welfare. In line with Allen's opinion, it was
revealed that even though organizational planning and
supervision were perfect, if the human resources were unable
to carry out their duties, a company would not achieve
maximum results [1].
Both physical and mental health constitute a primary
form of employee welfare in relation to the importance of
employees as human resources in the company, it is
necessary to pay attention to physical and mental health
issues. Almost all companies pay attention to the physical
health of employees by providing insurance. Meanwhile,
companies, in most instances, neglect to include mental
health. Bearing in mind that mental health is equally
important with the physical one. Mental health may prevail
upon individual performances. If it is not initially identified,
978-1-7281-4160-2/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE
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2nd Risalatul Mu’awanah 3rd Triyanna Widiyaningtyas
Universitas Negeri Malang Universitas Negeri Malang
Malang, Indonesia Malang, Indonesia
risalarisa97@gmail.com triyannaw.ft@um.ac.id
5nd Felix Andika Dwiyanto
Universitas Negeri Malang
Malang, Indonesia
ayikgugun@gmail.com
mental health issues would leave us a greater concern.
People with mental health issues may show a bizarre
behavior (mood and thinking alteration) [2]. By any chance,
every single individual has an equal degree and the
possibility of encountering mental health issues [3]. Based on
the results of a survey of working ages in several developed
countries, it is currently estimated that one in six working-
age adults was diagnosed having mental health problems [4].
Mental health problems are neglected problem at work. As a
result, employees experiencing mental health problems
cannot work optimally [5].
Some developed countries have great attention to the
mental health problems of workers; for instance, the United
States. The United States Government annually includes a
program budget to address workers' mental health [6].
Whereas in Indonesia, according to www.beritasatu.com in
October 2017, General Chair of the Metal, Electronic and
Machine Workers Federation (FPS LEM SPSI), Arif Minardi
said that Law Number 18/24 on Mental Health which was
passed by the House of Representatives had not been
implemented optimally. This happens because Indonesia
does not yet have accurate data on various aspects of mental
health disorders in the workplace. Companies and related
technical ministries rarely even allocate funds and personnel
to improve employee mental health. So from that, the
company needs to pay attention to mental health problems
experienced by employees. This problem needs to be
considered because it will disrupt the performance of the
employees, making the company suffer losses.
A survey conducted by a company called Open Sourcing
Mental Illness (OSMI) which is dedicated to raising
awareness, educating, and providing resources to support
mental health in communities or technology companies
found that 203 out of 417 respondents conducted the survey,
a number of 49% they experienced mental health problems;
208 out of 417 respondents or 50% had confessed that they
had a family history of mental health problems. Taking
everything into account, every single employee is highly
possible to encounter mental health disorders.
To minimize mental health issues among employees,
companies need to identify the driving forces that contribute
by designing effective support systems to maintain employee
mental health. This will lead to increased productivity and
overall efficiency of the workforce as a whole. For this
reason, a classification method is needed to find out whether
employees need mental health care. There are many methods
for classifying data, including Supporting Vector Machine,
K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), and Naïve Bayes.
Research related to employee mental health problems
was carried out by Shrruti Appiah, Sam Barnard, Jonathan
 The 6th International Conference on Electrical, Electronics and Information Engineering (ICEEIE 2019)
Deiven in 2017. The study took Principal Component
Analysis (PCA) to reduce the survey response dimension.
Data grouping was done by using Destiny-based Spatial
Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) and
comparing classifications between Support Vector Machines
(SVM) and Naïve Bayes. The study confirms that the SVM
algorithm produces higher accuracy above the Naïve Bayes
algorithm even though at an inadequate level to solve the
problem that the researcher wants to achieve, which is 66%.
Another study using the KNN method was conducted by
Indu Indah Purnomo in 2016 for the classification of
Household Welfare Status and chi-square-based feature
selection [7]. The study validates that the chi-square-based
KNN method was able to classify the welfare of the Socially
Built Families more accurately and also be able to find out
the results of the poor and very poor categories.
Similar research was also carried out by Nitin Bhatia and
Vandana in 2010. The study confirms that the KNN method
was effective and efficient in the area of pattern recognition,
text categories, object processing due to the simplicity of
processing and being able to train large amounts of data [ 8].
Among the available classification methods, this study
employed K-Nearest Neighbor to classify employee’s mental
health treatment data. Before classifying, a chi-square test
was carried out by using Statistical Package for the Social
Sciences (SPSS) to reduce data with large dimensions. Chi-
square is a feature selection that can eliminate many features
without reducing accuracy. Then the K-Nearest Neighbor
(KNN) algorithm was tested to classify employees who want
treatment for mental health disorders.
II. METHOD
This study employed five stages as follows, (1) data input
process, (2) preprocessing data, (3) KNN algorithm
classification process (4) evaluation of KNN algorithm
performance.
Fig. 1. Stages of Research
A. Data Input Process
The data used as input for classification was the result of
a survey of employee mental health carried out by a
company called Open Sourcing Mental Illness (OSMI).
OSMI is a service company dedicated to raising awareness,
providing education, and providing resources to support
mental health in communities or technology companies. Data
was taken from the OSMI official website,
https://www.osmihelp.org. The data used was the survey
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conducted in 2018. It was attended by people who worked
independently and people who worked in technology
companies. The survey results consisted of 68 questions and
417 respondents participated. Questions were related to the
position, and social relations in the company, physical and
mental health, and so forth.
Based on research conducted by Pratik Patel using the
same source data, problems taken were regarding whether or
not employees require mental health treatment [9]. The
questions used as a class label. It served as a reference for
choosing several attributes that are the driving factors for
requiring mental health treatment.
B. Data Input Process
1. Data Cleaning
Data cleaning was done manually. Firstly, it
removed attributes with a lot of missing values. The
missing value was data with an unfilled survey. Data
cleaning consisted of five processes, namely, (1)
removing attributes with a lot of missing values, (2)
removing irrelevant attributes (3) removing identical
attribute (4) filling in the blank method since the data
used was categorical, (5) shortening the attribute
name (initially was in the form of question).
2. Data Transformation
Using chi-square for selection is common when it
comes to nominal data. Chi-square is a non-
parametric statistics test often used for a study [10].
Chi-square tests the difference in the frequency of
observation data with the expected frequency. It
intends to find out whether the research is as
expected or not. Chi-square commonly deals with
independent testing, homogeneity test, and goodness
of fit. Independent testing assesses the relationship or
influence of two nominal variables and measuring
the strength of the relationship between one variable
and the other nominal variables. While homogeneity
test assesses whether a group is homogeneous or not.
The goodness of fit deals with how far an
observation is in accordance with the specified
setting.
To find out the relationship between label classes
with attributes on the dataset, independent testing
was used. Independent testing examines how much
difference is produced hence there is a difference
between the value of observation and expectations.
In this assessment, a test procedure x ^ 2 was carried
out. The chi-square test technique was to use discrete
data with a continuous distribution approach
(distribution ). The proximity of the resulting
approach depends on the size of various cells and the
contingency table.
According to Pearson, the test is done by
summing the difference in the observation value with
the expectation value squared relative to the
expectation value and looking for the value p, or
comparing the value of to the degree of freedom
that exists. Mathematically is written [11]:
 The 6th International Conference on Electrical, Electronics and Information Engineering (ICEEIE 2019)

If the values of x and y are the same, then distance D is

equal to 0. Whereas the values of x and y are different, then
(1) distance D is equal to 1.

with γ is equal to (b-1) (k-1), is the value of observation, C. Evaluations

is the expectation value, b is the number of lines, and k Evaluation of the performance of the KNN algorithm in this
is number of columns. After knowing the chi-square value, study was done by calculating the value of Precision, Recall,
then the hypothesis and is determined. Where and Accuracy through confusion matrix in accordance with
is mean that there is no relationship between variable 1 and Table I.
variable 2, while is mean that there is no
relationship between variable 1 and variable 2 TABLE I. CONFUSION MATRIX
Decision criteria: Correct Classification Clasified as
With a value of α = 5% and (γ), dk = (k-1) (n-1), then + -
+ True Positif (TP) False Positif (FP)
- False Negatif (FN) True Negatif (TN)
Where :
k = number of rows in tabulation
n = number of columns in tabulation Precision = x 100% (4)
then
Recall = x 100% (5)
reject , if the value >
accept , if the value < Accuracy = x 100% (6)

3. Data Transformation
The next step was data transformation. The input data that III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
has passed the previous stages were normalized first. Classification using the KNN method was carried out
Normalization aims at transforming the data to be in the with different values of k. it was done to obtain the optimal k
range [0-1]. However, normalization for categorical data value with the best accuracy. Therefore, a test of the value of
was not done since it is not numerical. Hence, the range of k was done and the results obtained as follows:
values is unknown. Transforming categorical data aims at [1] Testing Variations in Value k
transforming the value of each attribute into a new attribute.
The value of all attributes was transformed into binary [12]. Mental health treatment data testing with input data used
At this stage, 27 attributes were transformed into 11 361 instances which were divided into training data by 85%
attributes. or 306 data and test data by 15% or 55 data. Data were tested
first to determine the effect of the variable k value on the
performance of the KNN method on the data. The neighbor k
4. K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) values used were 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, and 21. The
K-Nearest Neighbor constitutes an algorithm to classify value of k used an odd value since it increased the speed of
objects based on learning data that is the closest distance to the algorithm [17]. Value of k testing can be seen in Table II.
the object. This method aims to classify new objects based
on attributes and training samples (application of the KNN The results in Table II indicate that the value of k was
algorithm). Its working principle is to find the closest high, as well as the accuracy percentage. The highest k value
distance between the data to be evaluated with the closest was at k = 17. In such a case, it is uncommonon that higher
neighbor in the training data [13]. value of k obtain high accuracy results. There will be a point
It only stores and classifies sample data. In the classification where the results of accuracy decrease after being at the
highest accuracy results [18]. The value of k = 19 has a
phase, similar features are calculated for testing (the
difference from the accuracy with k = 17, which only has an
classification is unknown). The distance from this new test
accuracy of 84.71%. Consequently, it took the value of k =
data to the training data was calculated, and the closest 17 with an accuracy of 85.15%.
number of k was taken. The new classification point was
predicted to be included in the highest classification of these
points [14]. To define the distance between two points on TABLE II. TESTING RESULTS VARIATION IN VALUE K
the training and test data, Euclidean Distance formula was No Value of k Accuracy
used with the equation, as follows: 1 3 82,23%
2 5 83,18%
3 7 84,62%
(2) 4 9 84,65%
However, for categorical values attributes, measurements 5 11 84,65%
6 13 84,34%
with euclidean distance are not appropriate [15]. Instead,
7 15 84,83%
Hamming function was used. The variable numbering 8 17 85,15%
standard was replaced between 0 and 1, if it was substituted 9 19 84,71%
between numbers and categorical variables in the dataset. 10 21 85,09%
With the formula as follows [16]:
TABLE III. HOLDOUT VALIDATION TEST RESULTS
(3)
and

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 The 6th International Conference on Electrical, Electronics and Information Engineering (ICEEIE 2019)

Scen Percentage of Percentage of Test Accuracy mental health treatment data. Whereas, the recall percentage
ario Training Data Data Amount Value is 96.97%. It indicates that the KNN algorithm is capable of
Amount
rediscovering information or classifying data on employee
1 75% 25% 85,71% mental health treatment. Last but not least, the accuracy
2 80% 20% 84,93% value is 87.27%. It affirms that the KNN algorithm was
3 85% 15% 87,27% declared effective in classifying employee mental health
treatment data. This is because the system produces
precision, recall, and accuracy to produce high values. This
[2] Holdout Validation Tests
is in line with the findings that the successful application of
Holdout validation testing was conducted to determine the media has an impact on the contribution of user
the effect of the amount of training data on the value of performance expectations [20], [21].
accuracy. In the holdout method, data were divided randomly
into training and test data from the entire data [19]. This test IV. CONCLUSION
took 361 data. There were three tests with different amounts
of training data and test data using the value of k from the To sum up, this research obtained 85% of training data
previous test, k = 17. The amount of each data for this test and 15% testing data which resulted higher value of
can be seen in Table III. precision, recall, and accuract compared to other data
composition. Accordingly, overall, the algorithm
The results in Table III indicate that testing of holdout performance in 85% of training data and 15% testing data is
validation with three scenarios obtained different accuracy considered stable—with accuracy percentage of 87.27%,
results. In the first scenario, the resulting accuracy was precision percentage of 84.21%, and recall percentage of
85.71%. The second scenario obtained the accuracy of 96.67%.
84.94%. The third scenario obtained the highest results with
an accuracy value of 87.27%. To sum up, in general, if the ACKNOWLEDGMENT
classification process uses an increasing amount of training
data, the higher the accuracy value will be obtained. This can The authors would like to thank to Open Sourcing Mental
happen because the system does more learning. Ilness (OSMI) owner for providing the data and their
support.
[3] Results of Algorithm Performance
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