Modern Health's 2026 survey reveals 71% of users link therapy to workplace stress, highlighting a need for operational rather than purely clinical fixes.
On September 21, 2026, Modern Health published global survey findings on the expanding role of therapy in the modern workplace. The research, covered by the Las Vegas Sun, argues that therapy is increasingly used not only for clinical needs but also for managing everyday work stress. This arrives at a time of significant cost pressure for organizations. The Las Vegas Sun reported that Business Group on Health projected U.S. employer health-care costs would rise 9.2% in 2027.
DKC Analytics conducted the online survey, while Pollfish supplied the sample. Fieldwork took place from August 3–9, 2026. The survey covered 2,000 full-time employees aged 22 to 60. All respondents worked for companies with at least 250 employees and had used or were currently using therapy.
Respondents came from the United States, United Kingdom, Mexico, and Singapore. The sample included 1,000 U.S. respondents, 400 from the U.K., 400 from Mexico, and 200 from Singapore. Modern Health reported a global margin of error of 2% at a 95% confidence level.
The findings point directly to the workplace as a primary driver of care utilization. Seventy-one percent of respondents said their need for therapy or coaching was connected to workplace stress. This figure included 65% of U.S. respondents. Managing everyday stressors was the leading reason for seeking therapy globally, cited by 42% of respondents.
In the U.S., that figure rose slightly to 47%. The results paint a picture of professionals turning to clinical settings for operational relief. Sixty percent of respondents said therapy felt more intensive than the support they actually required. Furthermore, 42% turned to therapy simply for someone to talk to.
The data indicates a mismatch between the severity of the stressor and the intensity of the intervention. Companies are paying for clinical hours to address common professional friction.
These findings force a hard look at how leaders handle recurring team-level stress. Among the 71% who connected their need for support to workplace stress, 51% believed managers could have solved the issue. They said all or most of that stress could have been addressed through manager guidance or action. This includes clearer communication, reasonable workloads, or better leadership.
Thirty-five percent of that workplace-stress group sought therapy or coaching instead of speaking with a manager or human resources. Matt Levin, Modern Health’s CEO, argued that workplace stress should not be treated solely as a personal problem. He noted that some employees end up in therapy for issues a well-equipped manager could have addressed at the source. Levin called for managers to receive practical support and training to handle heavy workloads and unclear expectations.
This allows leaders to address workplace stress appropriately rather than leaving employees to manage structurally caused stress through individual care. The goal is to build a reliable structure for performance rather than outsourcing the fallout. We have seen this mismatch before in the broader health space. I recently spent a week at a popular health conference and left completely exhausted by the complexity.
Everyone was pushing a new supplement protocol, a complicated gadget, or a rigid daily routine. It struck me that true high performers do not have time to make health a full-time job. They need maximum return on minimum viable effort. When organizations rely on therapy to fix bad meeting culture, they are choosing the most complicated, expensive tool available.
True sustainable performance requires fixing the operational root cause first. During the toughest quarter of my career, I noticed my ability to handle stress was tied directly to my cardiovascular fitness. I was trying to meditate my way out of a physiological deficit. Physical capacity is the absolute foundation of mental resilience.
In the same way, clear expectations and manageable workloads are the foundation of organizational resilience. You cannot out-therapize a toxic work environment or constant crisis mode.
The survey data strongly supports a shift toward proactive and structurally appropriate care. Ninety-three percent of respondents said they would prefer their employer to invest in support that prevented burnout before it began. Employees recognize when a clinical tool is being used for a non-clinical problem. Modern Health reported that 83% of respondents believed some issues they had brought to therapy could have been addressed through coaching.
Furthermore, 72% said they would use a workplace coach instead of therapy if coaching were offered. Alison Borland, Modern Health’s chief people and strategy officer, addressed this utilization pattern directly. She noted that rising mental-health-care use reflects previously unmet needs and progress toward an integrated health-care system. However, Borland criticized routing every emotional or behavioral-health concern to the same clinical option by default.
This approach can leave employees with care that does not fit their needs. It also leaves employers paying for a level of support that is not clinically appropriate or sustainable. The sources of modern workplace stress are also evolving rapidly, presenting new challenges for leaders. Modern Health’s survey found that 43% of employees globally believed anxiety about artificial intelligence contributed to their need for therapy or coaching.
This AI-related figure was 39% in the U.S. and 35% in the U.K. It jumped significantly to 65% in Singapore. This anxiety reflects uncertainty about role disruption and job replacement, which is a structural management issue. Providing access to coaching and clear executive performance pathways may address this specific anxiety better than clinical therapy.
Employees need clarity on their future roles, not just a space to process their fears about them. Addressing these systemic concerns at the team level prevents individual panic and preserves focus.
It is crucial to approach this data with intellectual honesty regarding its limits. The survey does not represent all employees or the general population. Every single respondent had used or was currently using therapy. The sample was strictly limited to full-time employees at organizations with at least 250 employees.
The findings may not generalize to small-business workers, freelancers, or part-time workers. Furthermore, these are self-reported associations, not clinical evidence that workplace stress directly caused respondents to seek therapy. The 51% manager-intervention finding reflects respondents’ perceptions about what might have solved their stress. It does not establish that manager action would actually have resolved those cases.
Additionally, the survey’s central thesis should not be interpreted as evidence that therapy is unnecessary. Eighty-eight percent of respondents said therapy met their needs. The survey was commissioned by Modern Health, a company that sells employer mental-health benefits. Their multi-modal model includes therapy and psychiatry alongside coaching and community groups.
It also features self-guided tools and crisis support. The company has a clear commercial interest in emphasizing a broader care model over therapy alone.
As health-care costs rise, organizations will likely restructure their benefits to match the intensity of the intervention to the severity of the need. Dr. Jessica Watrous, Modern Health’s chief clinical officer, distinguished coaching from therapy carefully. She described coaching as appropriate for everyday stress, habits, and skill-building. She explicitly stated that coaching is not a clinical substitute for therapy.
We expect to see more companies clearly defining these boundaries in their benefits architecture. Coaching addresses operational friction, while therapy provides vital clinical care. I remember landing at Heathrow after a brutal overnight flight from New York with a board meeting in three hours. The standard advice of getting eight hours of sleep felt completely useless in that scenario.
That was the exact moment I realized our readers do not need perfect scenarios. They need triage protocols for reality. They need to know what the science says about recovering cognitive performance when you only managed three hours of terrible sleep. The same principle applies to workplace stress management.
Employees dealing with sudden AI anxiety or a massive workload spike need immediate, practical triage. They need a manager who can ruthlessly prioritize tasks, or a coach who can help build new workflows. Clinical therapy remains essential for true behavioral health needs, but it should not be the sole safety net for an overwhelmed workforce. Moving forward, the most effective companies will train managers to handle operational stressors independently.
This will ensure sustained energy and resilience across the entire organization.
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