Ireland ranks alongside France, Belgium, Finland and the Netherlands as the five EU countries most affected by depression due to psychosocial factors such as job strain, long working hours, job insecurity and workplace bullying, according to the finding of a recent study by the European Trade Union Institute.
The study commissioned by the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), which calculated for the first time the price of depression and cardiovascular diseases in the workplace, has shown that such psychosocial issues are costing over €100bn a year in the EU, with employers bearing more than 80% of the burden.
The cost of depression attributable to all five PWEs is for instance 2.2 times higher in the Netherlands than in Poland per 100,000 workers, or 2.3 times higher in France than in Portugal.
France ranks first for job strain, effort–reward imbalance (when high effort is not matched by adequate recognition or compensation) and workplace bullying. Greece leads on long working hours while the Netherlands is the front runner for job insecurity.
Employers bear the largest share of the economic burden of depression attributable to five well-established psychosocial risks at work. These risks result in significant productivity losses through both sickness absence (when workers are unable to work) and presenteeism (when they show up but underperform due to poor mental health).
Beyond the mental health debate which started at European level only two years ago, this report is the first to quantify the economic cost of both depression and cardiovascular diseases – particularly coronary heart disease and stroke – linked to psychosocial work factors.
At the EU level, the annual total cost is estimated at €14 billion, with a marked east–west divide: Central, Eastern and Southern European countries bear the highest burden, largely due to a higher prevalence of disease and the substantial economic impact of premature deaths.
In 2015 alone, the report estimates that more than 10,000 workers died, and over 400,000 years of life were lost due to cardiovascular diseases and depression caused by work-related psychosocial risks. “These are preventable deaths,” said Dimitra Theodori, ETUI’s Head of Health and Safety. “We urgently need to redesign work environments to protect both mental and physical health,” she added.
The link between psychosocial risk exposure and cardiovascular disease is well established in scientific literature, and the economic burden per 100 000 workers is particularly high in Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Greece and Romania.
“While workplace fatalities have decreased over the years, the toll of psychosocial risks continues to rise—often invisible yet devastating. It’s time to treat mental well-being as a fundamental workplace right,” she noted.
