The destigmatization of mental health issues over the last few years are signs of opportunity, and the business community plays an important role in addressing the mental health crisis, David Cordani, chairman and CEO of The Cigna Group, said during the 2025 Workforce Mental Health Summit in San Francisco.

The Cigna Group and Business Roundtable convened business and health care industry thought leaders at the summit last week to discuss strategies to address mental health issues within the American workforce. Among the featured speakers was Olympic champion gymnast Simone Biles, who talked about ways she prioritizes her mental health and what business and community leaders can do to address the mental health crisis.

Cordani, who leads Business Roundtable’s Mental Health Initiative, set the stage by speaking about the importance of mental health, particularly in California, where a significant portion of the population experiences anxiety, depression, or stress. He noted an increase in calls to the state’s mental health hotline since its inception in 2022 and emphasized the growing need for mental health support.

“Thirty countries around the world identify mental health as the No. 1 health issue in their country,” Cordani said. “To have a community thrive, we need individuals who thrive, and that enables businesses to also thrive. Still, we know it comes down to one person at a time.”

Biles echoed Cordani’s sentiments, addressing her own unplanned role as a mental health advocate after her experience at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. “I put myself first and that’s what opened up the topic of mental health,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if I’d ever come back to gymnastics, but that’s the first time I ever felt worth more than gold because at the end of the day, people can’t relate to winning gold medals, but they can relate to mental health and silently struggling.”

Simone Biles talks about the ways she prioritizes her mental health with The Cigna Group CEO David Cordani.

Employers play a role in addressing the mental health crisis

Diane Brady, executive editor at Fortune, facilitated a panel discussion with Eva Borden, president of Behavioral Health at Evernorth, and Dane Linn, senior vice president of the Business Roundtable. Brady shared her personal experience with mental health, recounting the sudden death of her husband and the support she received from her employer. She highlighted the importance of having business leaders address mental health, noting the powerful impact of CEOs voicing their support.

Diane Brady, executive editor at Fortune, facilitated a discussion on workforce mental health with Business Roundtable senior vice president Dane Linn, and Eva Borden, president of Behavioral Health at Evernorth.

Borden discussed her personal and professional connections to mental health, sharing her daughter’s struggles and noting the widespread impact of mental health issues in the workforce, where 75% of American workers have at least one symptom of a mental health concern. Integrating mental health into company culture is crucial, she said, as are addressing resilience and serious mental illnesses.

“My hardest days as an employee are when my daughter is sick or not feeling okay, because then I’m not okay either,” she said, emphasizing the need for employers to strengthen their approach to family behavioral health.

Taking a data-driven approach is key

Linn emphasized the importance of companies looking at data to address mental health issues and starting small to build successes. He also discussed the role of virtual care options such as telehealth, which can help solve the national shortage of behavioral providers and increase access to mental health services.

For her part, Borden stressed the need for companies to make mental health part of their culture and to measure outcomes to ensure their initiatives are making a material difference.

“Behavioral health care has traditionally been hard to measure,” she said. “But one of the silver linings that came out of the COVID-19 pandemic is the introduction of technology into the mental health space. And so today, there is a significant opportunity in measuring outcomes.”

The power of empathy and leadership

Addressing mental health in the workplace requires empathetic leaders who listen, Linn said. Providing training to managers is critical. “That’s where the rubber hits the road,” he said. “Manager training is a very tactical way in which companies can change behavior, attitudes and actions.”

But making mental health a priority within a business ultimately requires a top-down approach, Borden said. It’s a CEO-level imperative.

“Having your CEO stand up and say ‘this matters’ is important,” she said. “That level of sponsorship, in addition to what you have from the grassroots efforts and benefits, really helps to create a powerful flywheel of what we can do differently.”