Mental health sick leave: 546,000 cases in Brazil in 2025

Brazil granted 546,254 temporary disability benefits for mental and behavioral disorders in 2025, according to the Ministry of Social Security. That is a 15.66% increase over 2024 and a new record. Anxiety and depression are the diagnoses that most often take Brazilians away from work for this reason.

If you are going through a hard time right now, CVV (Centro de Valorização da Vida, Brazil's emotional support service) answers free of charge, 24 hours a day, at 188.

What happened

The data were released by Social Security in January 2026 and reported by Agência Brasil on January 28. In 2024, the country had recorded 472,328 sick leaves for mental disorders. In 2025, there were 546,254.

The breakdown shows who is stopping and why:

• 166,489 leaves for other anxiety disorders;
• 126,608 for depressive episodes;
• 60,904 for bipolar affective disorder;
• 60,551 for recurrent depressive disorder.

Women accounted for 63.46% of the benefits: 346,613, against 199,641 for men. São Paulo had the highest number, with 149,375, followed by Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul.

These are benefits granted by the INSS (National Social Security Institute) to those who need to be away for more than 15 days. In other words, the number counts those who reached the point of stopping and went through the medical assessment. It does not count those who suffer and keep working, nor those without formal employment.

Why it matters

The figure helps give a size to a pain that usually stays hidden. Behind each sick leave there is a person who tried to hold on, a family that felt it too and, almost always, a long time between the first sign and the first request for help.

The greater weight among women also says something, even if the number alone does not explain the cause: double shifts, caring for children and parents, violence, lower income. And the fact that anxiety and depression lead shows these are not rare cases. It is ordinary suffering, of many people, reaching its limit.

On the other side, there is someone ready to listen. The Centro de Valorização da Vida provided about 2 million emotional support conversations in 2025, with trained volunteers, by phone at 188, by chat and by email.

In Bairo's view

Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez knows from the inside what it is to keep working while something is breaking. He says he lost everything more than once and that, in the last fall, he had fifty people depending on him. In his reading, the pain of those who work and run businesses rarely appears in the statistics before it becomes a sick leave, and that is where the challenge lies: getting there earlier.

For Bairo, getting there earlier is a question of access. Organized listening, at the right moment, can show the way to someone who does not know which door to knock on. That is the proposal of Hospital Triage: a clinical assistant listens, organizes and, when needed, calls a professional, who validates and decides. At Xperienc Global Labs, the clinical second opinion broadens the view of the doctor who follows the person.

He makes a point of saying that no technology replaces people. The pages on pain, faith and reconnection tell what he went through, and when to seek professional help shows the signs that it is time to ask for help.

Where this meets the ecosystem

Hospital Triage provides, for those living with a health condition, a daily question in simple language and a scheduled teleconsultation when something falls outside the usual pattern. At any sign of risk, the conversation stops and the person is given the human door: 192 for emergencies and CVV 188 for those who need to talk. The system is at the prototype stage.

CLAIN, the ecosystem's AI agent orchestrator, was born from the idea that every person can claim access to an intelligence that used to be expensive. In mental health, that access always begins with a person on the other end.

Sources

• Ministry of Social Security, "Previdência Social concede 546.254 benefícios por incapacidade temporária por transtornos mentais e comportamentais" (Social Security grants 546,254 temporary disability benefits for mental and behavioral disorders), Jan. 2026: gov.br/previdencia
• Agência Brasil (Radioagência Nacional), "Dados da Previdência sobre saúde mental do trabalhador preocupam" (Social Security data on workers' mental health raise concern), 1/28/2026: agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br
• CVV, "CVV celebra os oito anos do 188, que aproximou a escuta de milhões de brasileiros" (CVV celebrates eight years of 188, which brought listening closer to millions of Brazilians), 7/2/2026: cvv.org.br

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