Stress levels are rising among employed Indians owing to growing uncertainty in jobs in a highly disruptive environment as well as increasing anxiety in personal lives, studies have revealed.Increasing stress has, in turn, led to a surge in the number of people who are suffering from depression and are at high risk of suicide. Employers, therefore, face an increasing challenge of dealing with workers who are not only personally depressed but may also adversely impact the productivity of their organisations.Surveys conducted by Optum and 1to1help.net , two of the leading providers of employee assistance programmes to Indian organisations, have shown a significant increase in the number of workers who are severely depressed or who are vulnerable to taking their lives due to rising stress levels.Nearly half the employees in India suffer from some kind of stress, according to the findings of the latest survey by Optum, shared exclusively with ET. The survey was conducted among 800,000 employees in 70 large companies, each with a minimum workforce of 4,500.Another survey, conducted by 1to1help.net, showed that the proportion of workers at high risk of suicide due to unmanaged stress has grown to 8% of all counselling cases in 2018 from 2-4% two years ago.“There is so much of uncertainty and ambiguity in the environment that it leads to stress. It is the job of the leaders to ensure that they learn to absorb the stress and not pass it on (to employees),” said Saugata Gupta, managing director, Marico.Work, money and family are the most common sources of stress, the surveys found. Other factors include parenting, pregnancy, change, caregiving and social isolation. “Anxiety due to personal or professional reasons leads to stress, which then turns into depression,” said Amber Alam, head of business (India) at Optum International. “Employers face the challenge of fighting mental illness, which has a direct impact on productivity.”Archana Bisht, director at 1to1help.net, said that even in the past one year, the number of people coming forward with mental health complaints has increased. “The whole business environment today is under pressure. A lot of the stress comes from the work front, particularly in industries where a lot of restructuring is happening and people are concerned about their jobs,” she said.This is particularly true of middle level managers with children and loans to repay. Such people are among the better paid in their organisations and hence fear that they might be the first in line to be axed in case of a restructuring. In personal lives, too, an increasing number of people appear to be tormented by relationship issues and broken partnerships or marriages.In addition, there is intensifying peer pressure, thanks to social media, to match up to a certain lifestyle-—such as going on a fancy holiday— that is adding to the anxiety and leading to stress and depression.Millennial professionals face the highest risk of suicide and among them women are the most vulnerable, according to 1to1help.net findings. “Millennials (born after 1980) are at a high risk of suicide mostly due to personal issues such as relationship break-ups and conflicts in committed relationships,” said Bisht. “Mental health is a big issue among the youth who are sometimes not able to cope with small matters related to life or work. Absence of family support structure for many young professionals who have moved away from home for their careers is also compounding the stress.”Urbanisation is also contributing to the problem, said Chaitanya N Sreenivas, human resources head at IBM India . “People are coming into big cities. There’s less family support, more distances being travelled, less work-life balance,” he said.Employers are increasingly helping workers cope with stress through expert counselling assistance, career guidance, stress management sessions and health awareness programmes. “We have stress management and stress inhibiting systems because we consider anything that comes in the way of wholesome development of an employee stress,” said Prince Augustin, executive vice president-group human capital and leadership development at Mahindra & Mahindra.The automaker has a compulsory 14-day annual leave policy so that employees can de-stress and come back to work refreshed. In addition, it provides career conversation and counselling coaching to employees, apart from yoga, meditation and health awareness programmes.Others such as the RPG group are planning to have an in-house counsellor instead of outsourcing it to employee assistance programmes as most companies do. “We are planning to have one in every location so people can just walk in. We are also sensitising people including managers about mental health issues—anxiety, depression. We invited a counsellor from outside who talked about mental health. People have been opening up,” said Pratima Salunkhe, head HR, Raychem RPG.Sreenivas of IBM India said, “We have taken a very holistic approach to get to them before it becomes chronic depression or requires intervention.”The technology company has employee sensitisation as part of a programme called Mitr (friend) so that managers can identify whether people reporting to them have stress issues and employees can identify peers who are depressed.A few employers such as IT services management company EXL are focusing on offering active support to workers facing emotional distress through free of cost counselling sessions with experienced psychologists in office or on call.