THE new sunday express MAGAZINE Voices Anand Neelakantan Sathya Saran Shiv M Sahai S Vaidhyasubramaniam Deepali Bhardwaj Swami Sukhabodhananda Buffet People Wellness Books Food Art & Culture Entertainment november 30 2025 SUNDAY PAGES 12 Speaking Their Mind India’s youth are doing what their parents wouldn’t—solving personal and mental struggles openly online By Rishabh Thakur F or many today mental health isn’t just private—it’s public, , performative, and yes, profitable. Social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are now flooded with short, relatable clips: anxiety confessions, coping hacks, morning mindfulness routines, and real-talk about therapy What was once . private has become content—shareable, relatable, and endlessly scrollable. But this isn’t just about likes. By being open about their struggles, the youth is building communities where vulnerability is celebrated, stigma is challenged, and connection is currency Mental health . conversations now double as a social glue, turning followers into friends and clicks into conversations. And the monetisation angle is real. Self-care brands, wellness apps, mental health merch, and online courses are tapping into this wave, showing that emotional honesty can fuel both influence and income. Authenticity it seems, sells. , Every morning on her way to college, 25-year-old Sakshi scrolls through reels as the Delhi Metro rattles on. Sandwiched between dance videos and fashion hauls are clips that feel oddly personal, a stranger explaining what a panic attack looks like, a girl crying into her hoodie with the caption “healing isn’t linear,” a journalling tutorial set to sad indie music. Sakshi saves them, sometimes shares them, and on her worst days, replays them. They don’t solve her problems, but they remind her Shefali Anurag co-founder, coto “Healing today extends beyond clinics. Journals, mood boards, skincare routines, and vision boards have become symbols of self-care, while tarot, astrology, and energy rituals are increasingly popular gateways into wellness.” Still, the story of mental health in India lives in a delicate tension—between promise and absence. In the metros, therapy apps, digital confession diaries, and polished self-care rituals have turned private pain into communal language. Beyond these bubbles, cost, stigma, and deep silences continue to shape who gets help and who remains unseen. And yet, something unmistakable is stirring. Hashtags, late-night confession pages, and anonymous Discord channels have become rehearsal rooms for a more emotionally literate India. As one clinician notes, “Social media is valuable… but it can also create competition.” The duality is part of the atmosphere. Silent Shift For much of independent India’s story , mental health lived in the shadows. In middle-class living rooms, depression was In a global survey by McKinsey Health Institute, Gen Z respondents were more likely than older generations to say their mental health was poor or very poor (16% vs 7% for baby boomers) she’s not the only one living with an invisible heaviness. Mental health, once something that existed only as a rumour in Indian families, has become an algorithmic companion on the commute. This shift is unmistakable. Across India, therapy is no longer hidden in whispers; it has become a main character in the daily lives of youngsters. From confession pages on Instagram to therapy memes in college WhatsApp groups, from pastel-toned journalling aesthetics to podcasts on boundaries and trauma, the vocabulary and visuals of healing now dominate youth culture. What began as private coping has morphed into public content, community-building, and, in some cases, commerce. According to reports, India’s mental health and therapy market was valued at USD 20.17 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach USD 27.35 billion by 2033. The mental-health conversation is stepping into a dazzlingly digital future. Teletherapy , AI-powered wellness apps, and always-on peer communities are rewriting how young people find support—no waiting rooms, no whispered confessions, just instant access to help that feels personal, portable, and profoundly modern. Equally transformative is the energy of today’s youth, who aren’t just consuming mental-health content—they’re curating it, remixing it, and broadcasting it. Their feeds are threaded with coping tips, solidarity posts, and safe spaces built for voices long kept to the margins. It’s a cultural shift with the potential to ripple outward into policy institutional reform, and, , ultimately nationwide access to care. , dismissed as laziness, anxiety as mere overthinking, and emotional collapse as a failure of grit. The go-to prescriptions? “Take a walk,” “pray harder,” or the evergreen, “don’t tell anyone.” Therapy simply didn’t exist in the vocabulary of everyday life. In Bollywood’s glossy universe of the ’80s and ’90s, heartbreak dissolved into whisky glasses, not counselling rooms. Even the most privileged schools and colleges offered no counselling support; “problems” were meant for stoic family elders, trusted friends, or the silent endurance of suppression. A report by Krea University’s Sapien Labs Centre for the Human Brain and Mind revealed that across income groups, a staggering 51 per cent of Indian youth (18-24) were struggling or distressed. But a new generation grew up online— raised on Tumblr confessions, YouTube vulnerability and Instagram pages that turned , therapy into a lifestyle, a lexicon, and in some ways, an aspiration. These young Indians are the first to casually say “my therapist says…” over iced coffees. Their bios glow with words like “healing,” “empath,” “boundaries.” What changed exactly? “For a lot of us, talking about mental health online started as survival but grew into something transformative,” says writer, artist, and cancer survivor Tanisha Mahanta. “Living through anxiety depression, and chronic , illness, I found the internet to be a lifeline, and I am sure a lot of people feel that way It is a . space of awareness, empathy and resources , that our parents never had, or we were asked to just ignore it. Social media has made therapy less taboo, built communities, and sparked initiatives that genuinely help people heal.” She believes the real change, however, will come when empathy outweighs judgement and when the awareness that is built online translates into access, support and dignity offline too. The real rupture arrived in 2020. The pandemic pushed young Indians indoors, severing them from campuses, friendships, routines—everything that made their worlds real. Suddenly life existed entirely through , screens. Self-help books became survival manuals; mental-health TED talks became a kind of digital sanctuary; therapy apps turned into confidantes. Among the young, Instagram confession pages exploded, their inboxes brimming with anonymous grief—loneliness, heartbreak, panic, even suicidal thoughts. For many this was the first time mental health was , named in public, even behind the safety of anonymity . Take Rajat, a student in Dehradun, who remembers those months as a haze of Zoom fatigue, insomnia, and panic spirals. Online, he stumbled on creators who translated therapy into digestible, compassionate reels. “I realised what I was feeling wasn’t random. Once I opened up, many of my friends followed my lead.” A web-based study of 324 college students found 68.8 per cent reporting high Covid-19 fear, 51.5 per cent experiencing mild to severe anxiety and 28.7 per cent battling , moderate to severe depression—numbers that mirrored the everyday reality of a generation defined by isolation and academic freefall. Mental-health professionals and startups 46% of 1,000 Gen Z surveyed in a study were formally diagnosed with a mental-health condition felt the tremors. “The pandemic was a tipping point—demand for mental health services surged and, crucially, the conversation became mainstream,” says Krishna Veer Singh, co-founder and CEO of LISSUN. “While initial spikes reflected acute distress, the ongoing openness and awareness have led to sustained demand, especially among young people and young families. The shift toward digital-first, hybrid care models is here to stay, 34% of teens say they at least sometimes get mental-health information from social media; among those, 63% say it’s an important way they get info Dr Mona Gujral chief psychologist, coto “Today’s young generation is cultivating a deeply aestheticised form of vulnerability, what’s being called the ‘sad girl era’ or ‘coquette depression.’ But when depression becomes a fashion statement, there’s a real danger of trivialising true suffering.” and the need for accessible, stigma-free support continues to grow.” From silence to self-knowledge, from shame to shared language—the country’s emotional landscape is being rewired in real time. And for the first time in decades, healing is no longer a hush-hush affair—it’s a cultural movement. Curated Catharsis Global internet tropes—sad girl summer, soft life—have drifted seamlessly into Indian timelines. On Instagram and Pinterest, therapy comes dressed in sage-green journals, beige candles, and soft-focus pastels, turning an inner battle into a lifestyle palette. Nightroutine reels glow with lavender oil; “reset day” edits glimmer with iced coffee; “Sunday self-care” unfurls in clay masks and candlelight. Even breakdowns are framed for the feed: a teary selfie captioned with a Phoebe Bridgers lyric; a blackout poem on grief filtered to perfection. The chaos of mental illness is buffed clean, ready for the grid. Counselling psychologist Pranati Kapoor, deeply immersed in the anxieties shaping young adults today sees the double shimmer. , “Healing has almost become an aesthetic— decorated journals, perfectly staged self-care rituals, or the whole ‘sad girl era’ trend. Sometimes it feels like pain is being packaged as content, and I wonder if that reduces Turn to page 2