Entrepreneur Mental Health in Canada: What the Numbers Say

About a third of Canadian small business owners say mental health problems get in the way of their work at least once a week, and 35% saw a professional for a mental health concern in the past year (BDC, 2025, 1,510 owners). Cash flow is the top stressor, cited by half of them. Those are the two numbers I would put in front of any founder who thinks struggling means they are doing it wrong.

Key takeaways

Key takeaways

1. BDC's 2025 survey of 1,510 Canadian owners found 36% say mental health challenges interfere with their work at least weekly, rising to 60% of owners under 40.
2. 35% of Canadian owners saw a professional for a mental health concern in the past year, and most who did said it helped.
3. Cash flow (50%) and uncertainty (47%) top the stress list, and one in four owners names loneliness.
4. 24.4% of self-employed Canadians worked 50+ hours a week in 2022, against 3.7% of employees.
5. Trials support better sleep and regular exercise for improving mood, anxiety and stress, but they complement professional care rather than replace it.
6. Track sleep, movement, hours, mood and contact weekly, and escalate to a doctor or counsellor when a warning sign lasts two weeks.

This is the data piece in my executive health series. If you want the signs in plain language, read founder burnout signs first. Here I want to lay out what the Canadian numbers actually say, how solid they are, and what an owner can do with them this week.

What do the Canadian numbers say about entrepreneur mental health?

The best Canadian series comes from BDC (Business Development Bank of Canada), which has surveyed small business owners every year since 2018. Each wave is an online survey of roughly 1,500 owners from a commercial panel, weighted by region, number of employees and years in business. BDC is clear that the sample is not random, so the margin of error it quotes is for reference only.

Here is how the last three waves read:

• 2023 (Feb to Mar, 1,500 owners): 45% reported mental health challenges, up from 38% a year earlier. The share wanting to see a mental health professional rose from 21% to 31%. Work/life balance was a concern for 54%.
• 2024 (Feb to Mar, 1,502 owners): BDC added the WHO-5 well-being index, a five-question self-report scale scored out of 100. The average owner scored 59, and 34% scored 50 or below, the range that signals low well-being. In the two weeks before the survey, 47% felt tired, low or short on energy at least once a week, and 31% said mental health interfered with their work at least weekly.
• 2025 (Mar, 1,510 owners): The average WHO-5 score rose to 62 and the low well-being share fell to 28%. Still, 36% said mental health challenges interfere with their ability to work at least once a week. That jumps to 60% for owners under 40 and drops to 19% for owners 50 and over.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) measured the same strain from a different angle during and after the pandemic. In its November 2020 recovery survey (4,577 respondents), close to half of owners reported mental health problems linked to COVID-19, and 43% said they were working significantly more hours. In May 2022, CFIB reported that 50% of owners had difficulty coping with mental health challenges, two in three were close to burning out, and only 27% sought mental health support for themselves. The 2022 release does not give a sample size or field dates, so treat it as a snapshot from a hard period.

Two older Canadian sources fill in the picture. The Canadian Mental Health Association's 2019 study "Going it Alone", supported by BDC, surveyed nearly 500 owners of businesses at least a year old with at least one employee. It found 62% felt depressed at least once a week and 46% said mental health issues interfered with their work. Statistics Canada's 2010 General Social Survey found 27% of all workers described most days as quite a bit or extremely stressful, and that being self-employed somewhat raised the odds of being highly stressed. A quarter of highly stressed workers whose main worry was money were self-employed.

How the Canadian sources compare

What about the "72% of entrepreneurs" figure?

You will see a US statistic quoted a lot: 72% of entrepreneurs affected by mental health conditions. It comes from Freeman and colleagues, published in Small Business Economics (online 2018, 2019 issue). It is a self-report study of 242 entrepreneurs and 93 comparison participants. The 72% counts people affected directly or through family; 49% reported a personal history of at least one condition. It is interesting work, but it is small, not Canadian, and not a prevalence estimate for all founders. I would not build a decision on it.

Reading these numbers honestly

All of these are self-reports from owners who chose to answer a survey. None of them diagnoses anything. Year to year swings can reflect the economy as much as mental health. What holds across every source is the direction: a large minority of Canadian owners carry enough strain that it reaches their work most weeks, and younger owners report it at roughly three times the rate of owners over 50.

Why are small business owners so exposed?

BDC's 2025 survey asked owners what stresses them. Money and uncertainty lead the list: maintaining cash flow or profitability (50%), economic and political uncertainty (47%), work/life balance (46%) and inflation (43%). Further down sit the personal ones: high self-expectations (39%), fear of loss or failure (34%), decision-making (33%) and loneliness or isolation (24%).

I would group them into three exposures.

Cash is personal

When payroll is due and receivables are late, an owner does not have a manager to escalate to. The business bank account and the family budget are often a phone call apart. Half of owners naming cash flow as a stressor tells you this is the main pressure, not a side effect of the job.

Hours stretch because nobody stops you

Statistics Canada's Labour Force Survey shows that in 2022, 24.4% of self-employed Canadians usually worked 50 or more hours a week in their main job, against 3.7% of employees. That gap matters because output tends to flatten past about 50 hours while the health costs keep climbing. I covered the research in the 50-hour wall. At Fitness Town, during the growth years when we went from three to eight locations, I worked 60 to 70 hours most weeks as COO.

You decide alone

One in four owners names loneliness or isolation as a stressor. Employees vent to colleagues. Owners often cannot tell staff they are worried about payroll, and they may not want to worry a spouse either. The CMHA titled its study "Going it Alone" for a reason.

What are the early warning signs to track?

Burnout and depression rarely announce themselves. The BDC questions are a useful map because they ask about frequency, not feelings in the abstract. In 2024, at least once a week in the prior two weeks:

• 47% of owners felt tired, low or short on energy
• 39% felt depressed and accomplished less than they wanted
• 31% felt mental health challenges interfered with their work
• 31% wanted to talk to a mental health professional

I would turn those into things you can count. Sleep that drops below 7 hours most nights (the Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines recommend 7 to 9 for adults). Training sessions skipped more than kept. Decisions you keep postponing. Days you dread opening your inbox. More drinks to wind down. Pulling away from people you normally see. For what it is worth, I sleep 6 to 7 hours most nights, which puts me in the amber row of the table below. The six-hour sleep trap explains why short sleep is easy to underrate.

One rule: if you notice thoughts of harming yourself, a sense that people would be better off without you, or you cannot function for days at a time, skip the tracking and talk to a professional now. Call or text 9-8-8 any time, and call 9-1-1 if you are in immediate danger.

What actually helps, according to the evidence?

I coach founders on habits. I do not treat mental illness, and nothing here replaces a doctor or a mental health professional. With that clear, here is what the better research supports.

Sleep

A 2021 meta-analysis in Sleep Medicine Reviews pooled 65 randomised trials with 8,608 participants where an intervention improved sleep. Better sleep led to medium-sized improvements in depression and anxiety and a small-to-medium improvement in stress, and bigger sleep gains went with bigger mental health gains. Because these were trials, this is stronger evidence than a survey link.

Movement

A 2024 network meta-analysis in The BMJ pooled 218 trials with 14,170 people who had depression. Walking or jogging, yoga and strength training all produced moderate reductions in symptoms, and walking or jogging performed about as well as cognitive behavioural therapy in the comparison. The authors rated the certainty of evidence as low to very low, mostly because trials could not blind participants. The Canadian guidelines set the floor at 150 minutes a week of moderate to vigorous activity plus strength work twice a week.

Owners already sense this. In BDC's 2024 survey, the most common coping strategies were exercising regularly (44%) and taking time out or going for a walk (44%), followed by time off (38%) and talking to someone (32%). Only 14% listed getting help from a professional as a coping strategy.

Peer support

I could not find strong trial evidence on founder peer groups specifically, so I will not claim it. What the data does show is that a quarter of owners feel isolated, and that 35% of those who sought help in 2025 did so because family or friends encouraged them. Having at least one person who knows how the business is really going, and who will notice when you go quiet, is a reasonable bet with no downside.

Professional help

Among owners who saw a professional in 2025, 47% said it reduced anxiety and 40% said it improved how they manage stress. The most common route was a family doctor (40%), then in-person counselling (39%). The barriers owners name are cost (25% in 2024) and, in 2025, lack of time (26%). If time is your excuse, book the appointment the way you would book a meeting with your biggest client.

Where can Canadian business owners get support?

• In a crisis, use the 9-8-8 Suicide Crisis Helpline. Call or text 9-8-8, 24 hours a day, anywhere in Canada. Call 9-1-1 if you or someone else is in immediate danger.
• Your family doctor or a walk-in clinic was the most common kind of help owners used in BDC's 2025 survey, and the route to referrals and medication if needed.
• CMHA BounceBack is a free skill-building program based on cognitive behavioural therapy for low mood, worry and stress. In BC it is open to adults 19+ and youth 13+, delivered online or by phone with a coach, through CMHA BC at bouncebackbc.ca.
• Your local CMHA branch offers peer support, courses and local services. Find yours through cmha.ca.
• BDC's entrepreneur well-being hub (bdc.ca/wellbeing) has free articles, a WHO-5 self-check and the full survey reports. BDC clients can also access a limited number of free virtual therapy sessions through a partnership with GreenShield Health.
• An employee and family assistance program (EAP) may already be paid for. If your company carries group benefits, check whether the plan includes an EAP and whether you, as the owner, are covered.
• The Mental Health Commission of Canada is worth a look if you have staff: its workplace standard and employer toolkits help you build a psychologically safe workplace, which also lightens what lands on you.

A weekly self-check for founders

Run this every Sunday. It takes five minutes. It is a coaching tool, not a screening test. Two or more amber rows in a week, or any red row, means change something this week. A red row that lasts two weeks means book a doctor or counsellor.

What to do this week

1. Fill in the table for last week, honestly.
2. Pick the single worst row and fix only that one for seven days.
3. Tell one person how the business is actually going.
4. If any row has been red for two weeks, book the appointment before Friday.
5. Bookmark 9-8-8 and your local CMHA branch now, while you do not need them.

For the bigger picture on how health and leadership fit together, start at the executive health guide.

If the numbers in this article look uncomfortably familiar and you want help building the habits that hold up under the pressure of running a business, book a free 20-minute call and we will talk through where you are right now.