Ten years ago, I'd see maybe one or two IT professionals a month in my clinic. They'd come in sheepishly, almost apologetic, like they didn't deserve to be there. "It's nothing serious, doctor," they'd say. "Just a little stress."
Now it's ten a week. Sometimes more. And they don't call it "a little stress" anymore. They call it what it is. They can't sleep. They can't focus. They snap at their spouse over nothing. They sit in their car in the office parking lot for fifteen minutes before going in because they need that time to prepare themselves for the day. These aren't fragile people. These are smart, capable professionals who have been slowly ground down by a work culture that takes everything and says thank you by pinging them on WhatsApp at 10 p.m.
What I've Watched Change
The work itself hasn't necessarily gotten harder. What's changed is that there are no edges anymore. No clear line where work ends and life begins. I had a patient, a team lead at a big tech company in Bangalore, who told me he checks Slack before he brushes his teeth in the morning. Not because anyone asked him to. Because he's terrified of missing something while he slept. That fear, that low hum of "what if I'm not available and something goes wrong," is the thing I see most often now. It never fully goes away, not on weekends, not on holidays, not even at his daughter's birthday party.
Then there's the commute. I've had patients who spend three hours a day getting to work and back. In Mumbai, in Bangalore, in Delhi NCR. Three hours stolen from sleep, from family, from rest. By the time they get home, they're too tired to eat properly, too wired to sleep well, and the alarm goes off and it starts again. Nobody talks about this as a mental health issue, but in my experience, it's one of the biggest.
The Manager Problem
I can almost always tell when a patient's stress is coming from a bad manager. There's a particular kind of doubt that shows up. They stop trusting their own judgment. They second-guess every email, every decision. One woman told me her manager would assign work at 6 p.m. and expect it done by morning. When she raised it, he said, "This is the culture here. If you can't handle it, maybe this isn't the right place for you." She came to me not because of the workload. She came because she'd started believing he was right.
Micromanagement, unclear expectations, favouritism. These aren't just workplace annoyances. Over time, they erode your sense of competence. And when you stop believing you're good at your job, every other stress in your life gets amplified.
The EMI Doesn't Care About Your Bad Month
Here's something I don't think enough people say out loud. Financial pressure makes everything worse. Your home loan EMI lands on the first of every month whether you had a good quarter or a terrible one. The car payment, the school fees, the family expectations. When your job is the only thing standing between you and financial trouble, the stakes of every performance review, every reorg, every rumour of layoffs become unbearable. I've had patients whose anxiety spiked not because they lost their job, but because they heard a rumour that layoffs might happen in their department. The fear of the thing is sometimes worse than the thing itself.
What I Tell My Patients
I don't give big, dramatic advice. In my experience, the things that help are small and consistent.
I tell them to pick a time in the evening when they put their phone in another room. Not off, just in another room. The notifications can wait thirty minutes while you eat dinner with your family without one eye on the screen. Most of my patients resist this at first. Within two weeks, they tell me it's the best thing they've done.
I tell them to take a five minute walk after lunch. Not a workout. A walk. Around the office, around the block, down the corridor and back. It sounds like nothing, but it breaks the day into two halves, and the afternoon feels different after you've moved your body even a little.
I tell them to talk. Not to their manager, not to HR. To one person they trust. A friend, a sibling, a spouse. Say it out loud. "I'm struggling." Those two words are often the hardest to say and the most powerful once you do.
The Silence Is the Problem
"Sab kuch theek hai" might be the most damaging phrase in Indian professional life. Everyone says it. Nobody means it. I see it in my clinic every week. People who've been quietly falling apart for months, sometimes years, because they're convinced that admitting they're struggling means they're weak. That asking for help means they can't handle it.
It doesn't mean that. It means you're paying attention to something that deserves attention. Your work is part of your life, but it isn't all of it. And if it's taking more than it should, that's not a personal failing. That's a situation that needs to change. You're allowed to say so.
