Mental Health and Therapy: UK, Brazil and Japan Compared

What locals in the UK, Brazil and Japan actually say about seeking therapy — and why the obstacle is never quite the same obstacle

June 2026 · Researched via local sources using LikeLoc · 26 UK sources · 24 Brazilian sources · 28 Japanese sources

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Ask a global headline about mental health treatment and you'll get a reassuring story: stigma is falling, awareness is rising, and the world is finally taking psychology seriously. It's not wrong. But it flattens everything interesting.

I searched the same question — "public attitudes toward mental health treatment and therapy" — through local UK sources in English, local Brazilian sources in Portuguese, and local Japanese sources in Japanese. What came back was three completely different conversations about completely different problems. The UK is angry about a system that can't cope. Brazil is hopeful about a culture that's changing. Japan is still fighting a word that most English speakers have forgotten: gaman — the virtue of endurance, the duty to not need help.

→ Live searches: United Kingdom · Brazil · Japan

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Open conversation, broken system

The UK is in a strange position. By almost every cultural measure, it has one of the most open mental health conversations in the world. The word "therapy" doesn't carry shame the way it once did — 37% of British adults accessed some form of counselling or therapy in 2026, up two percentage points from the previous year. Younger adults in particular have normalised the idea. This is a country with regular "Time to Talk" days, a national mental health charity (Mind) with serious political influence, and a government that just launched what it's calling a "once-in-a-generation" cross-government mental health strategy.

And yet the local sources returned a dominant emotion of frustration. Because the conversation has outrun the system.

"You asked your GP for help months ago. You were referred, told to wait, and maybe discharged without being seen. You're not imagining it — the system is genuinely under pressure."

A King's College London study commissioned by Mind, published in October 2025, found something that local UK media reported with real alarm: public attitudes toward people with mental illness are getting worse, not better. The proportion of people who think community integration is the best therapy for those with mental health problems dropped from 83% in 2015 to just 68% in 2025. Comfort with mental health services nearby fell from 70% to 63% in the same period. Mind's report was titled: "Alarming rise in mental health stigma says Mind."

The British Psychological Society noted that stigma around seeking therapy remains distinct from stigma around having mental illness — and the former is still significant. According to the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy's 2026 survey (5,058 adults, nationally representative), nearly a third of men still view therapy as "self-indulgent." Meanwhile the NHS is spending £20.6 billion on mental health services in 2025–26 — more than any prior year — while 9% of mental health trust roles remain unfilled and waiting times regularly breach targets.

The result: people who've lost the cultural stigma still can't access care. Many are going private out of necessity, not preference, paying £60–100 per session because the public system can't see them in time. The House of Lords Library noted in March 2026 that an independent government review had found diagnosis rates of depression and anxiety rising sharply, particularly among younger adults.

→ Explore the live UK search on LikeLoc

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A culture learning to talk — and finding it harder than expected

Brazil's local conversation around mental health is one of genuine momentum, shaped in part by a decade-long public campaign called Janeiro Branco (White January), which advocates for mental health awareness and was officially recognised in law in 2023. The framing in Brazilian sources is notably different from the UK's: where the British conversation is about a system failing people who've already accepted that therapy is legitimate, Brazil's conversation is about changing minds so that people will accept it in the first place.

The numbers are striking. A recent survey cited in Brazilian local sources found that 67% of Brazilians plan to invest more in their mental health in 2026 — a figure that suggests a cultural shift is underway. Mental health professionals quoted across multiple outlets emphasise that therapy is increasingly seen not just as treatment for crisis, but as a tool for self-knowledge and emotional resilience, a frame that has helped de-stigmatise it.

"Mental health is not a luxury, but a basic necessity for a healthy and balanced life." — Brazilian mental health advocate, 2026

But the hopefulness is accompanied by serious structural problems. Around 18 million Brazilians live with severe mental disorders, and the suicide rate continues to rise. The Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS), Brazil's universal public health system, faces chronic underfunding of mental health specifically: the Federal Council of Psychology and allied bodies have formally criticised the government for directing investment toward institutionalised care (including asylums) rather than strengthening the Psychosocial Care Network (RAPS) and community-based services.

What Brazilian local sources convey is a country that has made the cultural argument — therapy is good, seeking help is strength — while the infrastructure to deliver it at scale remains inadequate. The optimism is real, but it is optimism about a direction of travel rather than a destination already reached.

→ Explore the live Brazil search on LikeLoc

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When the culture itself is the barrier

Japan's local conversation exists in a completely different register. The challenge in the UK is system capacity. The challenge in Brazil is access and awareness. In Japan, local sources point to something more foundational: a cultural value system in which needing psychological help is a form of failure.

The concept of gaman — stoic endurance, the virtue of bearing difficulty without complaint — is not a surface attitude that public campaigns can easily dislodge. It is embedded in how mental health is discussed (or not discussed) in workplaces, families, and schools. Local sources from the National Institute of Mental Health (NCNP) describe "mental health literacy" as an active area of concern: Japan's counselling utilisation rate sits at around 6%, shaped by the perception that therapy is for "special people," combined with high costs and general uncertainty about where to seek help.

The 2022 academic year saw "Prevention and Recovery from Mental Disorders" added to Japan's school curriculum for the first time in approximately 40 years — a reform that local sources treat as meaningful but also as an acknowledgment of how far behind the system has been. Workplace mental health is a particular site of anxiety: mental health problems leading to rōsai (work-related injury) claims have increased, and companies face legal and productivity pressure that is slowly driving corporate mental health programmes — but more as risk management than cultural change.

Only about 6% of Japanese people use counselling — shaped by the belief that it is for "special people," not ordinary life.

Digital mental health is the area of most active growth in local sources: online counselling platforms and mental health apps are expanding, partly because they offer anonymity — the ability to seek help without the social exposure that in-person therapy requires. Whether this represents the beginning of a cultural shift or a workaround that preserves the stigma rather than dismantling it is a question Japanese sources are actively debating.

The dominant emotion returned by the local search — anger — is itself revealing. It is not the ambient frustration of a system under pressure (as in the UK), but the sharper feeling of people who see the problem clearly and feel the gap between understanding and change.

→ Explore the live Japan search on LikeLoc

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Three barriers, three conversations

The detail that stayed with me from these three searches is that the word "stigma" means something different in each country — and that difference matters enormously.

In the UK, stigma is largely a solved problem at the cultural level and an unsolved one at the structural level. People know therapy is valid; they can't get it. The frustration is directed outward, at a system.

In Brazil, stigma is an in-progress project — being actively dismantled by campaigns, advocates, and shifting generational norms, but not yet gone, and not yet matched by the services needed to absorb the demand that would follow if it were.

In Japan, stigma is more deeply rooted because it is backed by a virtue, not merely a prejudice. Gaman doesn't just say "therapy is for weak people" — it says that endurance itself is honourable. That is a harder argument to counter, because countering it requires not just normalising help-seeking but questioning a cultural value that many Japanese people actively hold.

Dismantling stigma in the UK means fixing a system. In Brazil, it means changing a culture. In Japan, it means questioning a virtue.

No English-language summary of "global attitudes to mental health" captures this distinction. The global headline says the world is making progress, and at some aggregate level, it is. But the progress is happening in different places and running into different walls — and only local sources, searched in local languages, make those walls visible.

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Key data at a glance

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Selected sources

United Kingdom — 26 local sources searched

• Public attitudes to mental health are going backwards, warns Mind — "Public attitudes to mental health are going backwards, warns Mind" (King's College London / Mind, October 2025 — survey showing stigma indicators worsening)
• Alarming rise in mental health stigma in England - Mind — "Alarming rise in mental health stigma says Mind" (Mind charity's Big Mental Health Report, flagging backsliding in community attitudes)
• 2026 UK counselling and therapy trends and attitudes revealed — "2026 UK counselling and therapy trends and attitudes revealed" (BACP annual public perceptions survey, 5,058 adults — 37% accessed therapy, 29% of men view it as self-indulgent)
• Mental health pressures data analysis - BMA — "Mental health pressures data analysis" (British Medical Association, May 2026 — NHS bed shortages and workforce gaps)
• NHS Mental Health Waiting Times 2026: Why People Are Going Private — "NHS Mental Health Waiting Times: Why People in the UK Are Going Private" (TheraChange, 2026 — demand outpacing NHS capacity)
• Government to transform mental health care with new strategy - GOV.UK — "Government to transform mental health care with new strategy" (UK Government, May 2026 — cross-government 10-year strategy)

Brazil — 24 local sources searched

• Saúde mental: medidas de prevenção podem evitar transtornos mentais graves — "Mental health: prevention measures can prevent serious mental disorders" (Ceará State Health Secretariat — public awareness piece on White January)
• Saúde mental no Brasil: desafios para as políticas públicas e legislação — "Mental health in Brazil: challenges for public policy and legislation" (Debates em Psiquiatria journal — policy critique)
• A saúde mental e a importância dela na vida das pessoas - Hospital Santa Mônica — "Mental health and its importance in people's lives" (Hospital Santa Mônica — on therapy as self-knowledge, not just crisis care)
• Guia Parlamentar de Saúde Mental | IEPS — "Parliamentary Guide to Mental Health" (IEPS — policy guide for legislators on mental health funding)
• Brasil - Saúde mental e vulnerabilidade social: a direção do tratamento — "Mental health and social vulnerability: the direction of treatment" (SciELO Brazil — on access gaps for marginalised populations)

Japan — 28 local sources searched

• パブリックメンタルヘルス：40年の到達点とこれからの挑戦 — "Public Mental Health: 40 Years of Progress and Future Challenges" (University of Tokyo / MHPN — academic review of Japan's mental health trajectory)
• メンタルヘルスリテラシーについて | 国立研究開発法人 国立精神・神経医療研究センター — "About Mental Health Literacy" (National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry NCNP — on the 6% counselling utilisation rate)
• 日本におけるメンタルヘルスの現状課題と、これからの展望 — "Current Issues and Future Prospects of Mental Health in Japan" (GO100 — overview of cultural and structural barriers)
• 心の健康（メンタルヘルス）産業の振興 — "Promoting the Mental Health Industry" (RIETI — on cognitive behavioural therapy and the emerging digital mental health market)
• 世界保健機関(WHO) 職場のメンタルヘルス対策ガイドライン — "WHO Workplace Mental Health Guidelines" (Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare — adapted WHO guidance for Japanese workplace context)

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Methodology

All three searches were run on 18 June 2026 using LikeLoc, a search tool that queries each country's local internet in the local language and returns AI-summarised results in English. The query used was identical in all three cases: "public attitudes toward mental health treatment and therapy". LikeLoc expanded this into locally-phrased queries in English (UK), Portuguese (Brazil), and Japanese, searching local news, government sources, academic publications, and advocacy organisations. UK returned 26 sources; Brazil 24; Japan 28. All cited facts come directly from those local sources. Live searches: UK · Brazil · Japan.