Health care consumers are clear the global mental health care system is failing them as nearly half (49%) of respondents to EY’s Global Consumer Health Survey 2025 rate the mental health care system in their country as fair or poor – markedly worse than how they view the general health care system.
Patients seeking help are challenged by confusing information and a triage system that many health executives label as broken. They don’t understand which types of mental health providers are right for them. When they do select a provider, half change them, with the top reasons being a lack of personal connection or not satisfied with their progress, according to EY’s survey. They are perplexed by long wait times as well as questions about their financial burden and available insurance coverage.
On the ground, these barriers translate into emotional and fearful situations, to which anyone who has waited in an emergency room with a child, spouse or loved one suffering a mental health crisis can attest. Brushes with the mental health system are only set to rise: Half the global population is expected to develop one or more mental disorders during their lifetime. The cost of untreated mental illness is not one that society can escape. The estimated price tag of untreated mental illness for one US state (Indiana) was estimated at $4.2 billion annually.
Funding is too often focused on the acute end, which means more crisis care. But more upstream investment could help avoid the high costs and suffering involved in such an approach.
The EY research spotlights the points in the mental health care journey that consumers deem the most important, but also find the most difficult:
- Where to start looking for help with mental health
- Knowing what kind of mental health professional to seek out
- Getting care in a timely manner when needed
- Choosing the right type of professional that aligns with needs
- Finding affordable services
- Being clear on out-of-pocket costs
If health care systems are going to improve mental health journeys, they must consider stronger digital health strategies to offer better access, experience and outcomes. Better digital navigation can help divert care from acute areas toward prevention.
Here are five ways health organisations can build better digital mental health care delivery systems:
1. Improve mental health data collection
We know that health systems struggle with data collection for our basic physical health. When it comes to mental health, progress has been even worse, stalling attempts to generate insights that would help providers understand consumers, their needs and preferences.
As they work to improve mental health data collection, health systems should focus on data quality, standardisation, privacy and governance to ensure they are laying the right data foundation that will enable them to take advantage of analytics and other technologies. Their data strategies also must keep in mind the unique data privacy regulations over mental health data. Respondents to our survey emphasized the importance of having trust in the organizations with which they are sharing healthcare data.
2. Build intuitive digital tools to better connect patients to mental health care
In interviews, health executives acknowledged that triage processes are an issue and that better understanding of patients would improve levels of preventative care.
Digital front doors that help demystify and improve the labyrinth of mental health care can help health organisations fill care gaps. Some countries have focused on creating patient apps that will connect patients virtually to mental health professionals or offer them a referral for in-person care, when and where they need help. That more immediate, in the moment response can help keep patients from progressing to a crisis situation, where they may have to turn to more acute care options, such as the emergency room.
3. Expand virtual and digital options for care
Three quarters (75%) of survey respondents said they would be happy to receive support through digital or virtual services, while only 62% would choose to see mental health professionals in the office. When it comes to other digital options, 59% said they are interested in technologies that identify mental health risks and share data with health professionals to enable real-time support. They were less enthusiastic about digital chatbots and AI, with only 42% of consumers saying they would be open to those technologies for handling their health conditions.
4. Drive toward more personalised, effective care through analytics
By applying analytics, health organisations can better understand their patients, the reality of their lives, when they may need help, and how that care may best be deployed. One US digital mental health care provider, Brightside Health, has used AI and available scientific studies on mental health medications to move away from “trial and error” prescribing where a provider will offer one medication to a patient, tell them to try it for a period of time, and if it doesn’t work, to come back and try a new one.
This pattern can lengthen the amount of time it takes for symptoms to improve and increase patient suffering. With their precision AI tool, Brightside have improved the percentage of patients who get the right treatment the first time, with a study in BMC Psychiatry showing that more than 69% of patients got to the right treatment immediately.
Analytics also can help health organizations identify points in the journey where patients may need nudging, or a connection – eight in 10 respondents (81%) to our survey were open to annual preventative mental health checkups if they were available at no or minimal cost. Understanding how to get that care to consumers could help drive more people toward wellness.
5. Measure progress to demonstrate value to all stakeholders
Many respondents expressed scepticism about the value and efficacy of mental health services, with a third saying they can take care of their mental health issues themselves, and another 17% saying they don’t think professional care works. Meanwhile, payers and governments are asking for a better ROI for their investment.
Health leaders have voiced a desire for more standardization in the delivery of mental health care, mirroring the approach taken for conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes while also pointing to a lack of accountability when it comes to delivering quality mental health outcomes. The lack of measurement-based care in mental health certainly hampers the ability of providers to make the case that their services bring value. They also are not able to demonstrate what progress looks like to their patients.
Our conversations, backed by consumer research, show that health organizations need to forcefully embrace digital strategies to improve the system for patients, especially as organizations confront workforce shortages, rising costs and unsustainable budgets.
Digital strategies that are personalized and intuitive can strengthen health organizations’ relationships with patients, identifying more effective interventions, directing them to more appropriate care delivery sites, driving toward measurement-based care and more precise treatments – all of which will help reduce waste and burden on the system. Most importantly, a more preventative, real-time mental health care delivery system enabled by digital can go a long way to reduce fear and suffering for patients and their families.
Kim Dalla Torre is EY’s Global and Americas Health Leader