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Universal Music Group Expands Mental Health Push With Amber Health and Project Healthy Minds
UMG expands its mental health efforts with Amber Health, Project Healthy Minds and ongoing support programs for artists, staff and creators.
Universal Music Group is deepening its mental health and wellbeing work with two new partnerships, one with Amber Health and another with Project Healthy Minds, as the company looks to widen access to care across its creative community.
Announced today, May 13, the initiatives are designed to give UMG artists, songwriters and employees more direct support. For North American artists and songwriters, the Amber Health partnership means 24/7 access to mental health services, including clinical expertise, crisis response, care planning and specialized referrals. UMG will also extend the organization’s behavioral health support to employees in the United States and Canada, adding expanded resources and mental health support on top of that access.
Universal Music Group
Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via GI
UMG is also becoming a founding member of Project Healthy Minds’ workforce mental health research initiative, and the first music company to do so. The goal there is to help build a standardized framework for measuring workforce mental health and its relationship to organizational performance. The effort, backed by academic partners including Harvard Business School, is meant to produce data-driven benchmarks and shape best practices across industries.
“Through our strategic partnerships with organizations like Amber Health and Project Healthy Minds, and our continued investment in groundbreaking programs like Music Health Alliance’s Music Industry Mental Health Fund, we are working to redesign how our industry supports wellbeing. Our focus is on expanding access to care, reducing stigma, and ensuring that our artists and songwriters, employees, and the broader music community have the resources they need to thrive.”
That’s Susan Mazo, UMG’s chief impact officer, underscoring a broader company strategy that has been building for some time. Amber Health’s co-founders, Dr. Chayim Newman and Zack Borer, framed the collaboration as a meaningful change in how labels can support artists.
“Together with UMG’s corporate and label leadership, we’re embedding quick access to specialized mental health care directly into the labels’ infrastructure, making it proactive rather than an afterthought. We couldn’t be prouder of this work, or the message it sends to the rest of the music industry.”
Phil Schermer, founder and CEO of Project Healthy Minds, made a similar point about the visibility that comes with UMG’s involvement.
“Music has always been a vehicle for mental health conversations and now Universal Music Group is bringing that same honesty inside its own walls. When a company of UMG’s reach commits to this, the whole industry pays attention.”
The new moves build on work UMG has already put in place. In February 2025, the company partnered with Nashville-based nonprofit Music Health Alliance on the Music Industry Mental Health Fund, which offers comprehensive outpatient mental health resources to music professionals across the United States. That followed the healthcare access program UMG and MHA launched in April 2021.
Last year, UMG and Apple Music also introduced Sound Therapy globally, a wellness collection created to help listeners focus more clearly, relax more deeply and sleep better.
The push lands in an industry where the pressures are well documented. Isolation, travel, late nights and other factors have long put artists and the people around them at risk. A 2019 study from Swedish digital distribution platform Record Union, published before the pandemic, found that more than 73 percent of independent music makers reported symptoms of mental illness. More recently, Australia’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Survey 2024, released by music charity Support Act, found that 53.5% of Australian music and creative workers experience high or very high psychological distress, while more than 68% pointed to the cost of living as a major issue.
UMG continues to work with longstanding partners including the Mental Health Coalition, helping spotlight resources and research-backed ways music can support mental health.
