PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
NHS: Sick Leave (4 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).

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.