Yesterday, I attended an informal mental wellness meet-up in India. No stage. No panels. No recordings. Just founders, startups, investors, and individuals—some working in mental wellness, many not—but almost all dealing with it in one form or another.

I went in as an observer. I didn’t speak much. I mostly listened.

What struck me was not the sophistication of solutions or frameworks—but the sheer depth and persistence of the problem. It felt far larger, more chronic, and more unresolved than I had imagined.

When Lived Experience Overwhelms Theory

I haven’t personally navigated severe mental health challenges. I’ve dealt with physical issues—a slipped disc being a well-known one—which did have mental consequences. But not to the point where I felt I needed professional help.

That’s precisely why the conversations unsettled me.

People spoke about:

• Being in therapy for years
• Chronic insomnia spanning decades
• Burnout cycles that never really end
• High-functioning lives that quietly unravel

One entrepreneur sitting next to me spoke casually about living with long-standing insomnia. No drama. No exaggeration. Just acceptance. That, to me, was the most alarming part.

It raised a basic question: how many people around us are coping, not healing?

A Question That Wouldn’t Leave the Room

At some point, one participant asked something that stayed with me:

“Why do we intervene only after someone has an episode—burnout, depression, breakdown? Why can’t we spot the signs earlier?”

I don’t have an answer.

As clinicians, we’re trained to observe what’s visible. Even in medicine, mental health is often inferred rather than measured. In dentistry, I used to notice nocturnal bruxism—teeth grinding—as a possible stress marker. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Stress, anxiety, emotional fatigue—these don’t announce themselves cleanly. And in India, we don’t even agree on what “needing help” looks like.

The Scale Problem We’re Not Talking About

India’s mental health challenge isn’t abstract—it’s structural.

• India has ~0.3 psychiatrists per 100,000 people, compared to ~13 per 100,000 in high-income countries
• The Tele-MANAS helpline, open to a population of 1.4 billion, receives ~3,000 calls a day

Is that number reassuring—or deeply concerning?

Does it mean only 3,000 people need help each day?
Or does it mean millions don’t recognise distress, don’t trust systems, or don’t know where to turn?

I genuinely don’t know.

What worries me more is that most “advice” people consume today comes from social media—often well-intentioned, rarely clinically validated. Which raises another uncomfortable question:

Do we even have enough qualified professionals to guide a country this large?

Pressure, Performance, and Questions Without Villains

There was an interesting side conversation on pressure.

One investor floated an idea: Should mental wellness check-ins be mandated in startup term sheets? I was speaking to an investor, in a quieter exchange, who questioned whether pressure really flows from LPs to funds to startups—or whether we’ve normalised pressure without interrogating its source.

No one was pointing fingers. No villains. Just uncertainty.

It made me realise how easy it is to talk about “systems” and how hard it is to locate where stress actually originates—and how it compounds.

A Personal Realisation

I play golf to relax. It helps. But recently, as I started focusing on improving my handicap, stress crept back in.

Nothing dramatic. Nothing clinical.

Just a reminder that even our coping mechanisms can quietly turn into performance metrics.

I’m not playing on the PGA Tour. I don’t need that pressure. And yet—it sneaks in.

If that’s true for someone reasonably self-aware, reasonably resourced, what does it look like for everyone else?

No Grand Solutions. Just an Opening.

I’m writing this not because I’ve understood mental health.

I haven’t.

I’m writing because I’ve realised how little we collectively understand it—and how much of it we’re carrying silently.

Maybe the first step isn’t solutions, policies, or frameworks.
Maybe it’s better to ask questions, share stories, and have safe conversations.

I don’t know what the right interventions are.
I don’t know how early is “early enough.”
I don’t know how to scale empathy or self-awareness.

But I do know this: the problem is far bigger than we admit, and pretending otherwise isn’t helping anyone.

If you’re working in this space, struggling with it, researching it, funding it—or simply trying to make sense of it—I’d genuinely like to talk.

Not to fix it.
Just to understand it better.