Owen O'Kane
Wellbeing budgets have grown, but burnout, anxiety and presenteeism have not eased. Most workplace mental health support is too light to help the people who most need it, and too generic to convince a sceptical workforce that the organisation takes the issue seriously. The gap senior leaders feel is between wellness theatre and substantive psychological support that actually changes how people perform.
Owen O’Kane is a psychotherapist and former NHS Clinical Lead who helps organisations replace surface-level wellness programming with clinically grounded approaches to anxiety, stress and burnout.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Owen O’Kane
- A clinical record that buyers can trust. Former NHS Clinical Lead for a London mental health service, with twenty-five years of frontline practice across palliative care and psychotherapy. That credential separates substantive mental health work from the wellness market.
- Four Sunday Times bestsellers, including Addicted to Anxiety and Ten to Zen, give him a body of public-facing work that audiences have already read. Sessions land faster because people arrive with context.
- A method built from CBT, mindfulness, psychotherapy and EMDR, condensed into practical daily techniques people use the same week. Not aspirational, usable.
- Broadcast fluency from his role on BBC One’s Change Your Mind, Change Your Life and resident slot on BBC Radio 5 Live. He communicates clinical content to non-clinical audiences without losing the substance.
- Credibility with sceptical workforces. The combination of an Irish working-class background, openness about his own mental health, and a clinician’s vocabulary lets him reach senior leaders and frontline staff in the same room.
Biography highlights
- Former NHS Clinical Lead for mental health in London; previously Palliative Care Lead and Cognitive Psychotherapist, West Middlesex Hospital
- Sunday Times bestselling author: Ten to Zen, Ten Times Happier, How to Be Your Own Therapist (HarperCollins/HQ), and Addicted to Anxiety (Penguin, 2025)
- Featured psychotherapist on BBC One’s Change Your Mind, Change Your Life with Matt and Emma Willis
- Resident expert on BBC Radio 5 Live; former Attitude magazine columnist
- Corporate clients include Vodafone, Virgin Atlantic, BBC Worldwide and Universal Content Group
- Trained across cognitive psychotherapy, mindfulness, CBT and EMDR
Biography
Workplace mental health has become a budget line, not a result. Engagement scores stall, sickness absence climbs, and the most loaded staff quietly disengage. The honest question for senior leaders is whether the support on offer would actually help someone in real distress, or whether it is reassurance theatre for the people commissioning it.
Owen O’Kane has spent twenty-five years working at the harder end of that question. Trained as a cognitive psychotherapist after early years in palliative care, he went on to lead clinical mental health services inside the NHS, including roles at West Middlesex Hospital and within the London mental health system. The clinical training underwrites everything that follows.
His books, Ten to Zen, Ten Times Happier, How to Be Your Own Therapist and Addicted to Anxiety, are all Sunday Times bestsellers and share a single discipline: take the evidence base from CBT, mindfulness, psychotherapy and EMDR, and translate it into something a busy person can use in ten minutes. Addicted to Anxiety, published by Penguin in 2025, treats chronic anxiety as a learned habit rather than a permanent state, which is the argument he brings into corporate rooms.
He is one of four therapists featured on BBC One’s Change Your Mind, Change Your Life, hosted by Matt and Emma Willis, and a resident expert on BBC Radio 5 Live. That broadcast fluency matters in keynotes: he can hold a room of senior leaders and a room of frontline staff with the same material, without diluting the clinical content for either.
Key speaking topics
- Workplace anxiety and burnout
- Mental health for leaders and high-pressure teams
- Practical psychotherapy techniques for daily use
- Resilience and emotional regulation
- Stress management and recovery
- Building cultures that support genuine mental health
Ideal for
- CHROs and heads of people designing mental health and wellbeing strategy beyond box-ticking provision
- Executive teams and senior leaders carrying chronic decision pressure
- High-pressure functions including legal, finance, sales, clinical and frontline operations
- Internal wellbeing leads who need a credentialed clinical voice to anchor a campaign or summit
Audience outcomes
- A clear distinction between everyday stress and the clinical signals that need different action
- A short daily practice drawn from CBT, mindfulness and psychotherapy that people can run inside ten minutes
- Permission for senior leaders to name anxiety and pressure out loud, supported by evidence rather than slogans
- Language for managers to have better conversations about mental health with their teams
- A more honest internal assessment of whether existing wellbeing provision matches the level of distress staff actually carry