Rocket Health’s Mental Healthcare Report — India, 2023

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It’s no surprise that mental health challenges have been steadily rising over the past few years, courtesy of the pandemic, the overwhelming influx of information through social media, the rise of nuclear families, and myriad other contributing factors. However, what’s truly captivating is the transformative shift happening in the conversations around it.

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People now, more than ever, are openly talking about their struggles and it is slowly becoming normal (like it should’ve always been) to talk about their mental health.

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In 2023, our second year, we interacted with 1,30,000+ users who spent a minimum of 6 minutes each (🤯) with us sharing how they feel. This is more than 100% rise in people reaching out to us for help and spending 50% more time with us than last year.

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Here’s what we learnt from them:

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Who is seeking online care?

Rocket Health caters to individuals of all age groups seeking mental healthcare — whether embarking on their journey for the first time, looking to enhance their current path, or transitioning from offline to digital therapy.

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It’s no surprise that even this year, 97% of our audience is under the age of 41; they’re always thinking online first — from ordering groceries to their doorstep to accessing healthcare online.

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We found that for every 10 people that came to us, 7 were females and 3 were males.

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0.9% people who filled the survey were from LGBTQIA+ population.

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This year, we’ve noticed a meaningful trend: rise in men seeking help for their mental health. We observed a significant 25% increase in men seeking therapy, the uptick highlights a positive shift, showing that more men are opening up and embracing support.

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Where are our users coming from?

While people in tier 1 cities in India comprise almost 55% of our users, it is refreshing to see that tier 2 and 3 cities in India are equally accessing care. We all know that there is an unequal distribution of professionals across India with more density in metro cities but the below data just goes on to show that with the help of online care, we are bridging this gap.

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In 2023, our outreach extended globally — we had almost 4.2% of international users, which is quite surprising to us as we don’t market internationally. It’s a testament to the fact that individuals in India are recommending Rocket Health to their friends and family abroad.

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As of 2023, almost 25% of our users are coming via recommendations from their friends and family or after seeing our organic content online.

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What brings them to Rocket Health?

When asked how are you feeling today, a majority of our users answered that they were sad and stressed.

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It is truly disheartening to see that only 6% out of 1,30,000 respondents reported feeling happy and 5% felt relaxed. This paints a gripping picture of the current emotional landscape.

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We asked our users specific questions about any behavioural changes that they’ve observed in themselves. Some of these insights were very hard-hitting:

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Even though we are constantly connected with each other through social media and smartphones, 62% of our respondents said that they felt lonely in life. This is a growing problem of modern times — loneliness is a feeling almost all of us share but hardly talk about.

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But this doesn’t just stop at being lonely. Even with something as passive as watching television, almost 72% of people struggled with not being able to concentrate.

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We also found out that a majority of our respondents had little to no energy to perform daily tasks. This isn’t so surprising given that 68% had issues with sleeping too much, too little, or having poor sleep. Add to this factors like stress, burnout, and loneliness — you can understand why people’s quality of life is being negatively impacted.

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What comes as a shocker was that almost 66% had self-harm thoughts at some point in their life; and out of these folks, 24% have had self-harm thoughts nearly every day.

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Sexual health Issues are also psychological

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With an uptick in mental health awareness, people are more open to addressing psychological blockers to sexual health issues as well — 46% of our sexual health users said that they would want to take therapy along with their doctor consultation.

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The dominant symptoms and concerns related to sexual health involved difficulties in achieving and maintaining erection. Moreover, having a constant low libido and reaching climax faster were the other common issues raised by people who answered the survey.

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Couples therapy is for everyone

The main reasons why users wanted couples’ therapy was either to resolve conflict or to improve communication — same as last year, both married and unmarried couples seek therapy equally.

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We had a near middle split with respondents who lived with their partners and those who did not.

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We also noticed that around 2% of genderqueer couples are also seeking couples therapy.

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ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) is on the rise

70% of the consumers that contacted us with concerns about ADHD were from Gen Z.

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Here are the common challenges which they are facing:

• 77% said that they were unable to unwind and relax
• 83% of people said that they’ve had trouble wrapping up the final parts of a project once the more challenging parts were done
• 88% of respondents said that they are restless and fidgety.

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The symptoms of ADHD are frequently misinterpreted as other illnesses, and self-diagnosis on social media may worsen the confusion. It’s always advisable to have a professional assessment completed if concerned.

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How did Rocket Health help in 2023?

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In 2023, we facilitated 38,000+ consultations, hosted numerous events for our community and most importantly, touched the lives of millions of Indians through our community, healthcare and content.

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Content and Community

Our Cancel Stigma community has always been the centre stage of user conversations where we have more than 5500 members cancelling stigma around mental heath, everyday. Over the entire period, we’ve organised 500+ free events — from support groups by psychologists to co-working sessions to music sessions.

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Our content across Instagram and Facebook, has reached 40 million+ people. Follow us on Instagram here to see more content around human emotions.

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Care First

In the healthcare system, the focus often isn’t on the patient experience. We at Rocket Health are dedicated to flipping that script.

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Our care team is the real MVP — they truly go above and beyond to provide the best user experience to anyone seeking help around our products and services.

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Available on Whatsapp, the care team’s conversational style focusing on regular user check-ins has allowed us to build strong engagement and helps users find a resolution to their queries quickly.

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Quality Healthcare

We are building for the patient, with a healthcare-first approach. Every individual and each condition is unique and we provide personalised healthcare with real healthcare professionals. A patient comes in and gets a consult with a specialist and their treatment path is personalised based on their symptoms and the specialist’s recommendations.

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The most important stakeholder in our ecosystem, the reason we all do this is the patient. Our patients hold us accountable. We are in business to make their lives better. This healthcare first approach helps us instil trust in our users and is our biggest moat in driving retention.

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Reading about their experiences is the biggest inspiration for us and challenges us every day to always deliver the best care.

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You can read more user testimonials here.

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Moreover, our diverse team is proficient in 13 languages, eliminating language barriers that might hinder healthcare access. This multilingual capability enables us to cater to individuals from various linguistic backgrounds, ensuring comprehensive and accessible care for all.

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In 2023, we saw mental health and therapy become part of dinner table conversations across India. As a nation, we’re seeing a pivotal shift especially because young India is becoming more vulnerable in expressing about how they feel, what’s bothering them, and openly asking for help.

This year has been huge for us at Rocket Health

We have seen tremendous growth in building the mental health infrastructure for India — counseling therapy, clinical therapy, assessments, diagnostics and cloud pharmacy. We feel proud in building the foundational blocks so that every Indian has access to high quality mental healthcare on their smartphone. Currently, we have served 23,000 people, delivered more than 57,000 sessions, and we cannot wait to take this to millions of Indians who need mental health support.

‍— Abhineet, Founder at Rocket Health 🚀

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Here’s a link to read the 2022 report.

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Methodology‍‍

Rocket Health’s mental health report was done by studying the data collected between the months of January 2023 to December 2023. This data was gathered via multiple clinical surveys given out to 130689 people for different conditions.

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We believe that it is important to acknowledge that our study has some limitations. All surveys are subject to sampling and response bias and measurement error. Despite limitations, we used best survey practices and believe our findings add valuable insights to the mental health landscape in India.