Mental Health: Research shows six main reasons for seeking therapy

A survey by mental health platform Zenklub listed the top reasons people seek therapy services. The six most cited are anxiety, self-knowledge, self-esteem, family relationships and conflicts, love relationships and conflicts, and anguish.

The company analyzed approximately 500,000 therapy sessions between January 2021 and July 2022. The taxonomies self-knowledge and anxiety are the most recurrent during the sessions, with an average of 15% (self-knowledge) and 10% (anxiety) ratios. of consultations held in July 2022.

In July last year, self-knowledge was responsible for 18% of the reasons for holding the sessions. Anxiety, on the other hand, peaked in February 2021, reaching almost 16% of the reasons for consultations. However, as of July 2022, anxiety as a source of sessions has dropped by 23%.

The other reasons mentioned, such as self-esteem, relationships and anguish, represented, on average, 5% of the reasons for the sessions performed, ranging from 7% to 4% during the evaluated period.

According to Rui Brandão, CEO and co-founder of Zenklub, the pandemic was a watershed and gave more opening to talk about topics related to mental health. “At the same time that work entered the homes of many and we also experienced periods of mourning, emotions became more evident and people began to externalize emotional difficulties and seek help and self-knowledge to deal with adversity”, he says.

“Companies have opened up to give emotional support to their employees, but the Brazilian worker’s well-being index is still average and 64% of workers don’t have any benefit to take care of their mental health. Of course, therapy sessions are just the first pillar of this journey of well-being and the creation of a culture that offers psychological safety for the employee, however, it is necessary to start somewhere where these people start to externalize what they feel”, says Brandão.

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