NHS: Sick Leave

(asked on 4th May 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many NHS staff sick days were taken as a result of mental health issues in (a) 2019 and (b) 2010.


Answered by
Helen Whately Portrait
Helen Whately
Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 15th May 2020

NHS Digital publishes Hospital and Community Health Services workforce statistics. These include staff working in hospital trusts and clinical commissioning groups, but not staff working in primary care, general practitioner surgeries, local authorities or other providers.

The following table shows the number of days lost due to mental health reasons and the number of absences due to unknown reasons across all staff in the time periods specified, full time equivalent (FTE).

Time

Days lost due to mental health reasons

Unknown reason for sickness absence

January 2010 – December 2010

2,060,416

4,055,904

January 2019 – December 2019

4,796,928

927,827

Source: NHS Digital

Figures cover 1 January to 31 December each year.

Mental health reasons for 2010 includes the following reasons: 'Other Mental Disorders', 'Psychological', 'Stress' and 'Anxiety/stress/depression/other psychiatric illnesses'.

Mental health reasons for 2019 includes the reason of 'Anxiety/stress/depression/other psychiatric illnesses'.

Part of the increase in FTE days lost by sickness absence reason may be attributable to the improvement in completion of sickness absence reason information by staff.

The recording of sickness absence may have been increased by initiatives such as the NHS Health and Wellbeing framework.

Mental health awareness has increased in the last 10 years, with employers being more understanding and employees feeling more able to disclose mental health issues.

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