Nearly a third (31 percent) of US adults have delayed or avoided medical treatment because they feared how others would react to their health condition, according to a September 2026 survey of 1,049 adults conducted by Centiment on behalf of TelyRx, an online pharmacy platform that commissioned the survey to explore barriers to care for its target market. The finding extends a pattern documented across the benefits industry: coverage access and coverage utilization are not the same problem.
The conditions people hesitate over most are sexually transmitted infections (22 percent), mental health conditions including depression and anxiety (20 percent), and erectile dysfunction or vaginal atrophy (19 percent). All are common and treatable. Of the 328 respondents who said they had delayed care because of stigma, 91 percent reported at least one consequence, and 22 percent said they eventually needed urgent or emergency care. A condition that could have been treated early in a primary care or telehealth setting instead arrives in the emergency department, where costs are substantially higher.
The remaining consequences break down across a familiar pattern of compounding harm. Forty percent said their symptoms lasted longer than they otherwise would have. Thirty-eight percent reported worsening mental health. And 37 percent said they experienced stronger feelings of shame, guilt, or personal failure, a detail that points to why delayed care tends to extend itself.
One in five US adults said they would still hesitate or avoid seeking treatment for a stigmatized condition even if care were completely free. Among people who had already delayed care at least once, that share jumped to 45 percent.
Benefit designs that address only cost-sharing leave a meaningful portion of a plan population structurally disengaged. The pattern is consistent with broader findings on mental health benefit utilization. More than half of employees with access to employer-provided assistance programs have never used them, according to Prudential Financial’s 2025 Benefits & Beyond study, with fear of negative consequences and confidentiality concerns among the top barriers cited.
A separate 2025 report from Lincoln Financial and the Integrated Benefits Institute, covering more than 1,500 US call center employees, found that 15 percent of those who did not use their mental health benefits pointed to stigma, even though more than 75 percent had access to them.
The TelyRx survey also found that 53 percent of those who had delayed care had done so for six months or longer. Thirty-nine percent still had not been treated for at least one condition they had put off.
More than one in four US adults (28 percent) said they had hesitated to collect a prescription because they worried about being seen, overheard, or recognized. Among Gen Z respondents, a cohort now entering the workforce in volume, that figure was 47 percent, dropping to 38 percent for millennials, 25 percent for Gen X, and 11 percent for baby boomers.
The Hartford’s 2026 Future of Benefits Study of 1,000 US workers found independently that 37 percent of Gen Z workers say stigma prevents them from seeking care, the highest share of any generation in the workplace.
Ashley Robinson, pharmacy manager at TelyRx, said the appeal of workaround behaviors is privacy, rather than preference. Those behaviors include searching symptoms online, using leftover medication, and ordering from unfamiliar websites.
“Using alternative methods instead of professional treatment can feel more private,” she said. “But most alternative remedies aren’t held to the same evidence standards as medical treatment, meaning you could be masking symptoms without addressing the underlying condition.”
The survey found 77 percent of adults who had delayed care because of stigma said a private, at-home option would make them more likely to seek treatment, specifically an online clinical evaluation paired with discreet home delivery. Home delivery and mail-order pharmacy benefits address the friction. So does telehealth, where data from benefits administrator MedBen reported in 2025 that 20 percent of all mental health care among its plan members was delivered remotely in 2024, a share that has risen each year since 2020, driven largely by the privacy it offers.
