Mental illnesses have been increasing for years – according to the Barmer health insurance company, a third of all employed people in Bavaria recently received a corresponding diagnosis within a year. Six percent were on sick leave. According to the latest available billing data from the fund from 2021, extrapolated from the 7.8 million employed people in the Free State, around 470,000 people were unable to work at least once due to psychological suffering. This makes it all the more important to recognize and prevent risk factors, said Barmer regional managing director Alfred Kindshofer on Thursday in Munich.
“Risk factors are gender, it is age, and it is the profession,” said Kindshofer. With the exception of addictions, women are more likely to become mentally ill than men (39 versus 28 percent). Employees in medical and social professions have significantly more psychologically-related absences than people with high educational qualifications in academic professions. And older employees are affected more often than younger ones – with a particularly strong increase among 15 to 29 year olds.
But there are even more risk factors, Kindshofer described: According to the data, those who change employers frequently or move more often in a short period of time have an increased risk. Almost eleven percent of all employed people who had four or more employers within three years were diagnosed with a mental illness – compared to 7.6 percent of people with a constant professional environment. Differences were also evident between employees who had regular employment compared to colleagues in temporary employment. The difference between temporary and permanent employees is also minimally larger, explained Kindshofer. The difference between full-time and part-time employees is even more serious, of which 9.9 percent were affected (7.4 percent for full-time employees).
In its analysis, Barmer refers to the data of its 530,000 employed insured persons in Bavaria, which is considered representative due to the broad basis. “Of course, we are still far from getting to the point where everyone talks about a mental illness as freely as about a physical illness,” said Anja Buschner, describing the day-to-day work of the internationally active Franconian automotive supplier Schaeffler. “But people are increasingly less likely to hide behind illnesses such as tinnitus, stomach pain or back pain.”
In addition to education, offers of help, training on mental health and the role model function of managers, companies also have to take the working worlds that have changed as a result of Corona into account, described the specialist in corporate health management. This is how people used to walk to a meeting, at least get some exercise and have time to think. It’s not just different now in the home office. “Today we end a meeting by pressing the button, and a second later press the next button to start the next online meeting.” Digital rules are therefore also necessary, for example regarding expected accessibility.