Just seven years ago, polling revealed that 27 percent of a worldwide sample group viewed mental health as their biggest health concern. More recent polling by market research and consulting firm Ipsos shows that this number has jumped to 45 percent and now outpaces concerns about cancer, stress, obesity, and drug abuse. Fifty percent of U.S. respondents cited mental health as their top health concern. Many in the mental health field will attest to this, as we have seen our caseloads grow and demand for our services continue to increase. Common mental health challenges such as anxiety, stress, and depression have always been present, but how and why did such a serious increase occur, and what can be done to address this shocking reality?
The upside of this significant increase in concern about mental health is that it indicates that people are thinking about it, paying attention to it, and actively assessing how they are coping, feeling, and responding to stressors. Mental health has become mainstream and is now widely recognized as an important part of overall health. No longer do we view mental health or self-care as “trends” or “fads.” Rather, we recognize them as vital to our well-being. The troubling part, however, is that nearly half of those polled across 30 countries viewed mental health as a “concern.” People are actively worried about their psychological well-being, just as they might be concerned about acquiring a debilitating illness or disease. There is good reason for this heightened concern: “deaths of despair,” including suicides, drug overdoses, and deaths caused by alcoholism, have more than doubled in the past two decades (Galoustain, 2025). People, by and large, are struggling psychologically more now than at any other time in recent memory, with sometimes catastrophic consequences.
Why We Are More Concerned About Our Mental Health
The natural question is why? What forces underlie this phenomenon? We can look at a few factors to help us understand why we are seeing these types of metrics regarding mental health:
We Haven’t Healed from the Pandemic: Belief in mental health as a problem rose significantly during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Interestingly, as views of the coronavirus as a serious health concern have plummeted from 70 percent in 2020 to around 6 percent currently, in the same time period, views of mental health as a serious problem have risen nearly 30 percent. The pandemic had such an unprecedented impact on our mental health and psychological sense of safety that its impact is still being seen now, as these poll numbers reveal. We must always consider the impact of large-scale societal events on our mental health. The pandemic may well have had the biggest impact on mental health of any single event in the past three decades.
We Are Overwhelmed With Everyday Stressors: According to the authors of the survey, “in a world where many are consistently worrying about everything from crime to the cost of living to unemployment, perhaps it’s no surprise that emotional struggles are capturing the public’s imagination these days” (Ipsos, 2025). Again, those of us in the mental health field can attest to this conclusion: Many of our clients’ presenting problems, like anxiety, stress, and depression, are directly correlated to larger societal issues. Worries about finances, work, physical safety, political upheaval, and governmental policy have all become common topics in therapy in recent years.
We Are Feeling Less Autonomous: Increasingly, we are reliant on and, in some cases, problematically dependent on technology. This reliance on automation correlates to a loss of autonomy, which can have a negative impact on our emotions. When we feel we are not in control, we are prone to anxiety and depression, and the rise of AI has had a significant impact on our sense of autonomy. I have heard many of my clients express very real fears that AI will replace their jobs and render them obsolete. Hurtling technology that feels unchecked can cause emotional problems.
Our Young People Are Struggling: Statistics show that young people are struggling more than ever; 72 percent of Gen Z say they have had at least one period in the last 12 months where they could not cope because of stress. This reality has an impact on the numbers reflected in polling. With individuals aged 15 to 35 representing approximately one-fourth of the U.S. population, the realities of young people’s mental health challenges cannot be ignored.
We Are Working Too Much and Resting Too Little: Long gone are the days of clocking out of work and stepping into a different compartment of life. These days, doing this requires a concerted effort to create boundaries with our jobs, and that is becoming harder and harder to do. The cost of this blurring of work and life is our mental health. In 2025, rates of work-related burnout reached an all-time high of 66 percent (Robinson, 2025). Burnout leads to a slew of psychological challenges, including depression, sleep problems, cognitive impairment, and feelings of cynicism (Khammissa et al., 2022).
Acknowledgment Goes Only So Far
These widespread concerns about mental health should be taken seriously. This polling illustrates not only how aware we now are of our psychological well-being, but also how significantly it is affected by external factors. The problem is that acknowledgment goes only so far: Our mental health services continue to be strained, and the availability and accessibility of psychological services, unfortunately, have not accelerated at the same pace as the number of people who are worried about their mental health. But understanding why we are ever more concerned about our mental health can be a starting point. If we recognize that we are hanging onto psychological wounds from the pandemic, we are surrounded by daily stressors, we are feeling overtaken by technology, and we are working far too much, we can better recognize why mental health feels so fraught these days. And, from there, we can make adjustments and changes that can help us worry less about our mental health.