Work-related mental health conditions resulted in over 12 million sick days last year
20 November 2019
Findings from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) which have been analysed by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) show that a staggering 12.8 million working days were lost in 2018-2019 due to work-related mental health conditions.
The HSE is the UK’s health and safety watchdog, which aims to reduce work-related death, injury and ill-health. Employers have been warned that they must work to resolve the issues that cause stress, anxiety and depression amongst their staff in the workplace, as the average number of days off work directly relating to work-oriented mental health conditions was 21.2 days per affected individual. There were 1,800 individuals affected per 100,000 workers, and there have been consistent increases to these figures since 2014-2015.
Women in the age bracket of 35-44 saw the highest number of cases, with 2,410 cases in 100,000 workers, and women in general were more likely to suffer from work-related mental health conditions resulting in absence, than men. Mental health is the predominant cause of work-related ill-health and accounted for 44% of cases.
Highly pressurised work environments with heavy workloads were listed as the main drivers behind work-related mental health conditions but the most recent data available is taken from data collated from 2009-2010 and 2011-2012 and so could potentially now be out of date.
Health and safety professionals have called for substantial improvements to be made to the current occupational health system and urged for the next government to reform policies to acknowledge workplace health.
The head of workplace wellbeing at charity Mind, Emma Mamo stated, “It’s concerning that an increasing number of staff are needing to take time off sick because of problems like stress, anxiety and depression. It’s not clear whether these issues are on the rise or, more positively, whether it’s now more acceptable for staff to be open when they need time off work for these kinds of problems.”
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