More than three-quarters of U.S. workers -- 76% -- reported experiencing some level of burnout, with 53% at moderate to severe levels. But employees at companies that support their mental health are twice as likely to report no burnout or depression. Same workforce. Same economy. Different outcomes based on one variable: whether the organization actually cares.
What They Found
Mind Share Partners' 2025 Mental Health at Work Report, conducted in partnership with Qualtrics, surveyed 1,153 U.S. adults employed full-time. The findings draw a clear line between organizational behavior and employee wellbeing. Half of U.S. workers report moderate to severe burnout, depression, or anxiety. Top stressors include U.S. politics (43%), global events (42%), and personal finances (37%). Women, younger generations, LGBTQ+ employees, and front-line workers report the highest levels.
The stigma data is particularly telling: 46% of workers would worry about losing their job if they talked about their mental health at work. Despite mental health challenges being near-universal, nearly half the workforce considers disclosure a career risk. Less than half -- 49% -- feel comfortable disconnecting after work or while on vacation.
The report's most actionable finding: workers rated work-life balance and flexibility as what would be most helpful at work, ahead of mental health benefits, ahead of wellness programs, ahead of every corporate intervention. They do not want better tools for coping. They want less to cope with. Separately, 48% of employees have left a job for reasons tied to their mental health, and two-thirds of those departures were voluntary.
What They Missed
Mind Share Partners identifies the gap between what employees want (balance and flexibility) and what employers offer (programs and benefits). But the report stops short of stating the implication plainly: most organizational mental health investments are a substitute for the structural changes workers actually need. The 76% burnout rate is not evidence that employees need more support. It is evidence that the work itself is structured in a way that breaks people.
The Antidote
Research on how humans sustain effort over time reveals a concept called Mutual Journey Respect. The insight is this: not every worker's relationship with their job needs to be deep, emotional, or identity-defining for the employment to be successful. Some people bring their best work precisely because the organization does not demand their soul.
The Mind Share Partners data shows that 78% of workers support fairness and inclusion initiatives, and that employees at companies committed to these principles have better relationships with work, less stigma, and higher trust. But fairness is not a program. It is a posture. It means respecting that the person working the register, the person coding the backend, and the person managing the team all have different relationships to the work, and all of those relationships are legitimate.
When 46% of workers fear job loss for disclosing mental health challenges, that is not a stigma problem to be solved with awareness campaigns. That is a trust problem. And trust is built not by adding mental health resources but by honoring the boundary between what the organization needs from the worker and what the organization demands from the person. Mutual Journey Respect draws that line clearly and does not cross it.
What This Looks Like Monday
Review your team's after-hours communication patterns for the past month. If you or any manager on your team regularly sends messages outside business hours, stop. Not with a policy announcement. Just stop. When someone sends a 9 PM Slack message and gets no response until 8 AM, the boundary sets itself. The 49% who do not feel comfortable disconnecting need to see disconnection modeled, not permitted.