The New Office Anxiety: 44% More Indians Are Turning To Therapy At Work, Finds Corporate Mental Health Report

For decades, Indian workplaces functioned like particularly crowded trains: people squeezed together, enduring discomfort in silence, occasionally glancing at one another but rarely asking difficult questions. Stress was normal. Burnout was ambition in disguise. Anxiety was called “pressure.” But things are changing rapidly, according to a new report by digital health benefits platform ekincare, titled From Silence To Signal: India Inc.’s Mental Wellness Reckoning (2023-2026).

Based on more than 6,000 counselling sessions across the platform's corporate clients between 2023 and 2026, the report finds that workplace mental health utilization has grown by 44% since 2023. The interesting question is not whether employees are stressed. They always were. The real question is: why are they suddenly talking about it?

Key findings (Source: ekincare)

Key Findings

Counselling sessions across India Inc. have grown 44% since 2023, indicating that workplace mental health support is evolving from an underused employee benefit into a mainstream care channel.

Gen Z is normalizing therapy at work: employees aged 20-25 recorded 203% growth in counselling utilization over two years, far outpacing the 31-35 age group, which grew just 18%, suggesting a clear generational shift in comfort with seeking mental health support.

High-pressure industries are leading the mental health surge: counselling utilisation surged 408% in BFSI, the highest among industries studied, followed by Healthcare & Pharma at 122%, highlighting rising demand in high-pressure sectors.

The “Articulation Gap” is changing how distress appears in workplace data: while men are more clinically represented in anxiety and depression than women (38% vs 32%), they often describe their struggles using broader or less direct language, potentially masking underlying mental health concerns.

Asking for help doesn’t always translate into receiving it: 26.6% of employees who book a counselling session never attend one, revealing a critical drop-off between seeking help and accessing support.

The oldest workforce cohort is showing the most clinical need: Among employees aged 35+, 44% of counselling sessions relate to anxiety, depression, or mood concerns.

Statistics from the report (Source: ekincare)

5 clusters of distress (Source: ekincare)

Gen Z Refuses To Suffer

If you grew up in India in the 1990s or early 2000s, emotional struggle was something to be hidden with remarkable efficiency. Families prized resilience, but resilience often meant endurance. You carried on. But Gen Z appears to be operating under an entirely different emotional contract. For younger workers, therapy is increasingly treated not as an emergency intervention but as maintenance, almost equivalent to going to the gym or visiting a dentist.

Language changes behaviour. And when a generation learns to say words like burnout, boundaries, anxiety, and emotional exhaustion without embarrassment, invisible suffering becomes measurable. The report calls this shift a movement “from silence to signal,” and the phrase feels apt. After all, you cannot solve problems that nobody names.

2-year growth in mental wellness sessions (Source: ekincare)

What is stressing employees out the most (Source: ekincare)

The “Articulation Gap”

Although men show greater clinical representation in anxiety and depression than women in the report, men often describe emotional distress using broader, indirect language. Instead of saying, “I feel depressed,” they may say, “I can’t focus anymore.” Instead of “I feel anxious,” perhaps “I’ve just been stressed lately.”

For generations, Indian men inherited emotional scripts built around competence, stoicism, and responsibility. So they learned substitution. Stress instead of sadness. Anger instead of grief.

Sector-wise growth in mental wellness sessions (Source: ekincare)

India Inc.’s Mental Health Turning Point

Says Dr. Noel Coutinho, Co-founder of ekincare, “The conversation around workplace mental health has fundamentally changed. A few years ago, the question was: how do we get employees to use these programmes? Today, usage is no longer a challenge. The challenge is readiness. Are our systems equipped for the scale, complexity, and clinical depth of the demand that is emerging? Because when 1 in 4 employees finds the courage to book a session and still doesn’t show up, the issue is psychological safety."

For years, corporate mental health programmes functioned like ornamental gym memberships: available, technically useful, but largely ignored. This report suggests we have crossed an inflection point. Mental health support is becoming infrastructure. Workplaces, for better or worse, are becoming one of the most important gateways through which Indian adults access mental healthcare.

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