Nearly half of benefits leaders at large multinational organizations say AI and rapid technological change are negatively affecting the mental health of their workforces, and most of them plan to spend more on mental health benefits in 2027 to address it. The tension between rising investment and rising complexity is the central finding of Lyra Health’s seventh annual Workforce Mental Health Trends Forecast, which surveyed more than 500 HR and benefits leaders at US-based organizations with 500 or more employees.
The report arrives as employer healthcare costs are already under significant pressure. Business Group on Health’s 2027 Employer Healthcare Strategy Survey, released in August 2026, projected a median 9.2% increase in healthcare costs for 2027. That pressure extends to mental health. Seventy-three percent of employers in BGH’s 2026 Employer Health Care Strategy Survey reporting increased utilization of mental health and substance use disorder services, which the group identified as an emerging cost driver.
Against that cost backdrop, 82% of benefits leaders in the Lyra survey justify expanded mental health budgets not as a wellness add-on, but as a cost-containment and productivity argument.
What the Lyra report adds to that backdrop is specificity about what is driving mental health needs in the current moment. Benefits leaders flagged job insecurity and displacement (57%), stress from ongoing change (57%), and loss of human connection (54%) as their top concerns as AI changes work. These are not traditional burnout categories. They describe a workforce being asked to adapt faster than support systems were designed for.
An employee assistance program built around confidential counseling sessions addresses individual distress. It is less well-suited to ambient anxiety rooted in uncertainty about job relevance, eroding confidence in professional judgment, and cognitive overload from faster-moving workflows.
Eighty-four percent of benefits leaders in the survey say the future of workforce mental health requires more than expanding access, a finding that points to the gap between how most plans currently work and what employees are actually experiencing.
Half of benefits leaders say children’s mental health is among the areas they are least prepared to address. Finding the right level of care for a child, rather than simply finding a provider, ranked as their top challenge in supporting working parents. On neurodiversity, 79% of employers are investing in tailored support, yet 67% remain unsure how to do it well.
Managers surface as another pressure point. Eighty-nine percent of benefits leaders say managers will become more important as AI changes work, and 79% expect them to lead larger teams. Yet 85% say managers would benefit from more support, and the report notes that benefits leaders are less confident than last year that managers themselves are mentally healthy.
Across children’s coverage, neurodivergent employee support, and manager mental health, the same pattern holds: employer spending has increased while plan design has not kept pace with the complexity of the needs it is trying to address.
