New Delhi, Feb. 27 -- A landmark global study finds 43% of Indian adults aged 18-34 are in psychological distress or struggle - while their parents' generation remains largely intact. The numbers demand a reckoning.
New Delhi [India], February 27 : If you are between 18 and 34 and living in India right now, the largest ongoing study of human mind health in the world has something to tell you: on average, you are enduring your life, not thriving in it. And the generation that raised you? They are doing just fine.
That stark divide is at the heart of the Global Mind Health Report 2025 - the annual publication of the Global Mind Project by Sapien Labs, which has now collected data from over 2.5 million people across 85 countries. For India, the numbers are specific, measurable, and deeply uncomfortable.
The Numbers India Cannot Ignore
India's young adults aged 18-34 scored a Mind Health Quotient (MHQ) of 33 in 2025 - placing them in the "Enduring" range on the report's six-tier scale that runs from Distressed to Thriving. A score in this band corresponds, on average, to a person functioning at full capacity only a fraction of the month.
Their parents and grandparents - those 55 and older in India - scored 96. They sit comfortably in the "Managing" to "Succeeding" range. The gap between the two generations is 63 MHQ points.
More strikingly, 43% of Indian young adults fall into the report's two most troubled categories - Distressed or Struggling - compared to just 12% of those aged 55 and above. These are not people who simply feel stressed on difficult days. In the report's methodology, 89% of those in the Distressed and Struggling categories meet the clinical criteria for at least one mental health disorder.
The sample for India is substantial: 29,594 respondents aged 18-34 and 24,088 aged 55 and above were included in this year's analysis.
"Our aggregate measure of Mind Health is linearly related to productivity, and the Social Self metric is negatively correlated with violent crime. As both decline across generations, we are not only predicting a substantial impact on economic activity, but also rising rates of violent crime worldwide," said Tara Thiagarajan,Founder and Chief Scientist, Sapien Labs .
Not Just India - But India's Position Is Telling
India ranks 60th out of 84 countries for mind health among young adults aged 18-34. Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania lead the global rankings, while Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom occupy the bottom. India sits in the lower third of that global table.
The report's finding that cuts across every country without exception: no nation has escaped this generational divide. In every one of the 84 countries studied, young adults score lower on the MHQ than older adults. But the magnitude of that gap - and where on the scale young people land - varies dramatically.
The Four Factors - And Where India Stands
The report identifies four key drivers that together explain a large share of diminished mind health in young adults globally: close family bonds, spirituality, the age at which young people first received a smartphone, and ultra-processed food consumption. Here is where India falls on each.
Family Bonds
64% of Indian young adults aged 18-34 report being close to some or many family members - placing India at rank 28 out of 80 countries, a middling position. For older Indians aged 55+, that figure rises to 78%, placing them also at rank 28 for their age group. The gap between generations in India (14 percentage points) closely mirrors the global average of 14%. The report finds that those without close family bonds are almost four times more likely to fall in the Distressed or Struggling category.
Spirituality
On a 9-point scale measuring sense of connection to a higher power or divine, Indian young adults average 6.7 - well above the global average of 5.7 - placing India at rank 39 out of 69 countries. Notably, Indian young adults score higher on spirituality than their elders (6.7 versus 5.8 for those 55+), one of the relatively few countries where this is true. The report finds that countries where young adults average above 7 on this scale have MHQ scores 30 points higher on average than countries where young adults average below 4.
Age of First Smartphone
The average age at which Indian GenZ (aged 18-24) received their first smartphone is 16.5 - ranking India 71st out of 79 countries, meaning Indian young people got phones relatively late compared to their global peers. The global average is 14. By contrast, Finnish children received smartphones at an average age of 9.9. The report notes that a younger age of first smartphone ownership is associated with increased suicidal thoughts, aggression, and other problems in adulthood, and that the negative impacts are particularly sharp below age 13.
Ultra-Processed Food
44% of Indian young adults aged 18-34 consume ultra-processed food most days or daily, ranking India 71st out of 85 countries for this metric - meaning India has relatively lower UPF consumption compared to most of the world. For those 55 and above in India, that figure drops sharply to 11%, placing the older generation at rank 76. The generational gap in India is 33 percentage points. By comparison, 79% of young adults in the United States and 76% in South Korea consume UPF regularly.
The Paradox at the Centre
The report's most confronting observation is this: the wealthier a country, the worse the mind health of its young adults. The bottom of the global rankings for young adult mind health includes the United Kingdom, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan - among the world's most developed economies. Sub-Saharan African nations, by contrast, dominate the top ten.
And spending more on mental health care has not reversed the trend. The United States spent $2.2 billion on mental health research in 2024 alone and over $100 billion annually on treatment of mental disorders in adults. Outcomes have not improved.
India, in that sense, occupies an instructive position: its young people are faring poorly, but not as poorly as their counterparts in the wealthiest nations. Its protective factors - late smartphone acquisition, relatively higher spirituality, lower ultra-processed food consumption - appear to offer some buffer. Whether those buffers hold as India urbanises faster, as food supply chains shift, and as digital access expands further down the age curve, is the question the data does not yet answer.
What the Report Calls For
The Global Mind Project does not prescribe policy for any individual country. But it is pointed about the failure of current approaches. It calls for upstream, structural change - focused not only on treatment, but on the environmental factors shaping young minds. It argues that solutions must begin at multiple levels simultaneously: individual behaviours, school environments, and national policies, all in ways that can be measured and iterated.
The scale of the problem is not subtle. Almost half of India's young adults - 43% - are, by this measure, experiencing difficulties of clinical significance that substantially impact their ability to function productively in daily life. This is over four times the rate among adults aged 55 and older.
The data was collected between January 2024 and December 2025, covering internet-enabled populations. The methodology uses the Mind Health Quotient (MHQ), a 47-item assessment of cognitive, emotional, social, and physical functioning developed by Sapien Labs and validated in peer-reviewed publications.
About the study
This report is published by the Global Mind Project, the world's largest and most comprehensive global study of mental health factors alongside social determinants and lifestyle factors. (See how it compares to the World Happiness report and WHO mental health survey here). Its data has been validated against national statistics in peer reviewed journals. So too its novel metric of aggregate mind health that relates linearly to productive function. Numerous findings from the Global Mind Project have been published in peer reviewed journals and are available in the press room.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from PNN.