In the past year, Bavarian employees were absent from work more often than ever before because of mental illness. Depression, anxiety or chronic fatigue were most noticeable in healthcare workers. In general, older workers had more downtime due to mental illness than younger workers, but the youngest workers saw the sharpest increase in 2022. This emerges from the representative Psychreport Bavaria of the health insurance company DAK, which is available to the German Press Agency.
According to this, the number of days absent from work due to mental illness rose by 7 percent to 255 days per 100 insured persons – and thus to the highest value since the figures were collected 25 years ago. “Many people with mental illnesses suffer particularly from the ongoing burdens of Corona, war and crises,” explained DAK country manager Sophie Schwab. In the past decade, the number of days absent has increased by 52 percent. Bavaria is still 15 percent below the national average.
From a purely statistical point of view, every mentally ill employee in the Free State was on sick leave for 36.8 days last year. That is 1.9 days fewer than in the previous year. Women are still absent from work more often than men because of mental illness, but the gap is narrowing: for every 100 employed women, the number of days absent increased by four percent to 304 last year, while among men there was a jump of eleven percent to 212 days absent gave.
“Those affected are currently finding it much more difficult to get back to their everyday work,” explained Schwab. It also has to do with stigma. “People are now talking more openly about depression or anxiety in the family and in the doctor’s office. But in the world of work we have to do more to ensure that mental health problems are not taboo.”
The most common diagnosis in mental illness in Bavaria was depression. While these fell slightly by 1.8 percent for women, they rose by nine percent for men. Stress and adjustment disorders after a stressful event such as a death followed in second place. They increased by around a quarter in men and by 15 percent in women. Other neurotic disorders such as chronic exhaustion were the third most common cause of failure.
Particularly striking: Absences due to mental illness increased in almost all age groups, but young employees between the ages of 15 and 19 had the strongest increase. Significant increases were also seen among the under-25s. The days absent increased most among young men under the age of 20: They rose by 82 percent, while the increase for women of the same age was 26 percent.
Among the sectors, one with a particularly high level of absenteeism stands out: in the healthcare sector there were 345 absentee days per 100 insured persons. That was 36 percent more than the average for all sectors. Employees from the wood, paper, printing and IT sectors were also well above average when it came to mental absences.
For the report, the IGES Institute evaluated the data of around 345,000 DAK-insured employees in Bavaria, according to the third-largest health insurance company in Germany. Due to the large database, the results are considered representative.
However, a small distortion is caused by the new electronic sick note. Since August 2022, there has been a sharp increase in very short sick leave due to the direct transmission from the doctor’s practices to the health insurers. However, sick leave due to psychological problems rarely lasts a few days, so that the recent increase in absenteeism in this area is only slightly due to electronic sick leave, according to the health insurer.
