Predicting mood swings in women of reproductive age using machine learning on metabolic, menstrual, and lifestyle indicators.

BACKGROUND

Mood swings in reproductive-age women arise from interacting hormonal, metabolic, and lifestyle factors, yet scalable screening tools remain limited. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) approaches offer the potential to integrate diverse predictors and enable early, data-driven risk stratification.

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the performance of ML algorithms in predicting mood swings among reproductive-age women using menstrual, metabolic, and lifestyle survey data and to identify the most influential predictors.

METHODS

The study cohort included 465 reproductive-age women, with fifteen survey-derived features categorized into metabolic (e.g., BMI, recent weight gain, polycystic ovary syndrome), menstrual (regular periods, period length), lifestyle (fast-food consumption, daily exercise), symptom burden score, and demographic (age) categories. We compared five ML models: Random Forest, SVM, Gradient Boosting, LightGBM, and CatBoost, using precision, recall, F1, accuracy, and AUCPR metrics. Feature importance was assessed with permutation feature importance (PFI) and shapley additive explanations (SHAP).

RESULTS

Across models, the highest values achieved were precision 0.83, recall 0.91, accuracy 0.74, and AUCPR 0.87. PFI and SHAP converged on symptom burden as the dominant predictor, with additional signal from lifestyle indicators (higher fast-food consumption, lower daily exercise) and metabolic/dermatologic markers. Menstrual regularity/length contributed minimally; age showed a modest inverse association.

CONCLUSIONS

Low-cost, self-reported features can support ML prediction of mood swings in reproductive-age women with good performance. Findings motivate prospective validation, dynamic prediction with wearables, and evaluation of AI-based approaches for early detection of women's mental health concerns in community and primary care settings.