By 2024, mental health in the workplace will decline sharply, with a surge in people leaving the workforce due to job burnout and mental illness.
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New research shows that mental health and well-being will continue to decline in 2024. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, one in five Americans in 2023 (57.8 million in 2021) were living with some kind of mental illness, including mild, moderate, or severe anxiety or depression. Anxiety is the most commonly reported mental illness in the United States, with 42.5 million Americans suffering from the disorder. Several studies suggest that burnout will increase, mental health will plummet, and mental health leave will soar in 2024.
Nearly four years into the COVID-19 pandemic, employees are faced with the daunting challenge of balancing their work and personal lives while also dealing with the aftermath of the global crisis, according to Lyra Health's 2024 State of Employee Mental Health Report. With growing stressors including inflation, mass layoffs and feelings of helplessness due to international wars and climate-related disasters, the report concludes that employees need more support.
Study #1 Job Burnout
According to LinkedIn's Workforce Confidence survey, four in 10 U.S. workers say they're burned out at work. Project managers report higher rates of burnout than those working in the health and social care fields, with half of workers in those professions saying they're experiencing burnout due to overwhelming workplace stress that they don't have a solution for.
Additionally, findings show that on-site workers are more likely to experience burnout than hybrid or remote workers, and employees at large companies are more likely to experience burnout than employees at small and medium-sized companies. Younger workers are more likely to experience burnout than their older colleagues, and women are more likely to report burnout than their male colleagues.
Study 2: Workplace Toxicity
Businesssolver's 2024 Empathy Study surveyed over 3,000 employees to reveal how ingrained bias and workplace toxicity are exacerbating the ongoing mental health crisis in today's workplaces. Research shows that CEOs are burning out along with their employees. A staggering 55% of CEOs and 50% of employees have experienced a mental health issue in the past year. Additionally, 65% of Gen Z have experienced a mental health issue in the past year. The survey also found that on average, 35% of employees and 52% of CEOs view their company's culture as toxic.
Employees who report a toxic workplace are 47% more likely to cite mental health issues. Similarly, there are stigmas in employee and CEO views of mental health in the workplace that contribute to a toxic workplace, as well as potential psychological safety issues that prevent employees from showing empathy among their colleagues.
The longer stigma around empathy and mental health in the workplace persists, the more severe the impact on business performance and talent retention will be, according to the report.
88% of respondents say they are willing to stay with an organization that is empathetic to their needs. 70% believe a company's financial performance is related to empathy. 65% say it would be easy to find a new job if they left their current organization. 52% are willing to accept a small pay cut for a more empathetic employer.
Study 3: Mental health-related absences surge
ComPsych, the largest provider of employee mental health and absence management services, released new data showing that mental health-related leave of absence continues to soar among the U.S. workforce. From 2017 to 2023, mental health-related leave of absence increased 300%. In 2023 alone, mental health-related leave of absence increased 33% year over year. In 2023, nearly seven in 10 mental health-related leave of absences were taken by women (69%). Millennial women accounted for one-third (33%) of mental health-related leave of absences in 2023, followed by Gen X women at 30%.
More than one in ten (11%) of all absences were due to mental health, representing a 22% increase in mental health leave compared to Q1 2023. As with previous ComPsych data, this trend is driven by female workers: women made up 69% of all mental health leave in 2023, but that number increased further to 71% in Q1 2024. The number of Americans who took mental health-related leave in Q1 2024 exceeded the number of leave due to accidents, cancer, COVID-19, heart disease, and heart attacks combined.
“Our data shows that millennial and Gen X women are the most likely to need mental health-related time off,” said Richard A. Chaifetz, founder, CEO and chairman of ComPsych. “HR teams need to invest in resources and programs relevant to the issues these age groups commonly face, including the pressures of managing a team, the stress of buying a first-time home, returning to the workplace as a new parent and worries about caring for elderly relatives.”
Chaifetz concludes: “As leaders in the integration of mental health and absence management, we have a unique perspective on how these two areas intersect. It's clear that proactively investing in employee mental health is a key strategy for HR teams looking to mitigate the costs and impacts of employee absence.”
