The workforce, counted.
How many mental-health professionals does India actually have? There was no published answer. So we pulled the full national register and counted it, plainly.
Where you live decides whether help exists.
Clinical psychologists per million people, by state. The gap between the top and the bottom is about twentyfold.
Measured on the 2011 census, so today's gap is wider. Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are left out of this ranking: the 2014 state split makes older registrations read as Andhra, so a per-capita figure for either would mislead.
Clinical psychologists are a sliver.
The register holds 2,00,590 licensed professionals across sixteen fields. The people most associate with the word therapist are 2.2 percent of it.
Every figure comes from the Rehabilitation Council of India, Central Rehabilitation Register, the public government registry of licensed rehabilitation professionals. We pulled and counted the full register in July 2026. It is a public record we counted, not proprietary research.
One scope note. The RCI is India's licensed register for clinical and rehabilitation professionals. It does not include counselling psychologists, psychotherapists, or coaches, who practise outside it, so the real number offering mental-health support is larger. The reach problem applies to all of them.
Read the story behind the count →