India’s most successful men are turning to therapy like never before: Why are so many high achievers quietly struggling?

In February 2024, Nithin Kamath, the co-founder and CEO of Zerodha suffered a stroke. He was 44. In the months that followed, he spoke publicly about the role that chronic stress, poor sleep, and emotional exhaustion had played in his deteriorating health. For many people watching, it wasn't the stroke itself that was arresting, it was a founder of his stature saying, plainly, that the pressure had been too much. It wasn't an isolated moment. Deepinder Goyal, co-founder and CEO of Zomato, has publicly acknowledged his investment in employee mental health, announcing in January 2025 that Zomato has an in-house mental health team. Several entrepreneurs have spoken in interviews about the psychological weight of running a company. These are some of the most visible men in Indian business. And they're all signalling, in different ways, that the old approach, push through, say nothing, keep moving, is not working.For generations, the unspoken rule for men in India, particularly successful ones, was simple. You lead and you hold it together. Emotional difficulty was something you pushed through, not something you discussed. Therapy was for people who couldn't cope. And if you were the one everyone else depended on like the CEO, the patriarch, the founder with hundreds of employees counting on you,admitting to struggling wasn't just uncomfortable. It felt like a betrayal of the role.Dr. Munia Bhattacharya, Senior Consultant in Clinical Psychology at Marengo Asia Hospitals, Gurugram, has watched this script play out across her practice for years. "For years, Indian society celebrated a particular version of masculinity," she says. "A successful man was expected to earn well, solve everyone's problems and never reveal his own." The result, she says, is that many of the most accomplished men she sees professionally are also the most emotionally isolated. "The higher a person climbs, the fewer spaces they have where they can simply be human. Everyone looks to them for answers, while they themselves have no safe place to ask questions."The numbers make it harder to ignore. According to India's National Crime Records Bureau data, men account for nearly 73 per cent of all suicides in India, with economic stress and social pressure cited among the leading causes. And untreated mental illness is projected to cost India over $1 trillion in lost GDP by 2030, with employers already losing ₹1.1 lakh crore annually due to burnout and absenteeism. A 2024 global study on entrepreneurs' mental health found that 87.7 per cent of entrepreneurs face at least one mental health issue, with high stress and anxiety being the most common. And while that figure spans countries, India's context makes it sharper, a startup ecosystem that rewards obsessive work culture, a social structure that ties male identity tightly to professional success, and a mental healthcare system with roughly 9,000 psychiatrists for 1.4 billion people, far below WHO standards.Dr. Deeksha Kalra, Associate Consultant in Psychiatry at Artemis Hospitals, describes a specific type of patient she sees with increasing frequency, men who look, from the outside, like they have everything under control. "High performing people often have to deal with long working hours, competition, financial responsibilities, leadership issues and pressure to maintain their success," she says. "From the outside they look confident, successful and happy but behind the scenes many are fighting with stress, anxiety, burnout, loneliness and self-doubt."There's something particularly cruel about success, in this sense. It narrows your world. The more authority you have, the less honest feedback you receive. The people around you need things from you. Your vulnerabilities become liabilities. Dr. Bhattacharya puts it starkly: "The men who appear to have the most control over their lives are often the ones who have spent the longest controlling their emotions." And suppressed emotions, she is quick to point out, don't disappear quietly. "They simply find another route — through anxiety, irritability, burnout or strained relationships."Something has shifted in how urban, educated, professionally successful men in India frame the decision to seek help. It's no longer seen, by this group at least, as an admission of failure. It's increasingly framed as a form of performance, an investment in sustained functioning.Dr. Kalra identifies a generational recalibration in how success itself is being defined. "The successful men of today know that real success is not merely a matter of money, position and career advancement," she says. "It also encompasses emotional stability, healthy relationships, personal satisfaction and overall health." Therapy, in that framing, isn't a last resort. It's part of the infrastructure of a well-functioning life.Dr. Bhattacharya is direct about what the resistance has always actually been. "The opposite of strength is not vulnerability," she says. "The opposite of strength is pretending that vulnerability does not exist." She sees men arriving at therapy not after breakdown, but before it. "A growing number of successful men now see psychological support as they would executive coaching or preventive healthcare. They are not waiting for a crisis. They are choosing self-awareness over silent suffering."None of this means the stigma is gone. India's mental health treatment gap sits at between 80 and 90 per cent, meaning most people who need care never receive it. For men specifically, that stigma is reinforced at every level, in how families talk about emotional difficulty, in how workplaces reward stoicism, in how masculinity itself is still routinely defined by emotional unavailability.What's changing, slowly and unevenly, is the cultural permission to step outside that definition. When CEOs talk about it, it makes it imaginable for the next man to do the same.As Dr. Bhattacharya puts it: "The strongest men are not those who carry every burden alone. They are the ones who know that even the strongest shoulders deserve support."That's not a new idea. But in India, in 2026, it might finally be getting heard.