NHS staff take over 626,000 sick days for mental health in one month

“The NHS acknowledged that the figures were far too high and that it was doing everything it could to address the issue.”

How does that balance with the handling of the merge of NHSE into DHSE, the intended reductions to ICBs, and the closure of the CSUs?

I suspect this figure will be increasing whilst this work and lack of clarity is ongoing.

It’s almost as if people think that people who care for others health are immune to health issues themselves. Believe it or not, they’re MORE likely to have issues.

When I went off sick with stress from my NHS job, I immediately emailed my manager to arrange a meeting about potentially quitting.

It took 3 months before they bothered responding to my emails and I got paid in full the whole time 🤷‍♂️

“NHS overworks and underpays staff so they burn out and have to take sick days”

Fixed the headline for them.

I mean they’re on the front line and see some pretty fucked up things sometimes 4/5 times in a single shift. Bosses are sometimes unsupportive, there’s a bullying culture in some hospitals, the list goes on.

Apart from moral side of doing something good for people and caring for them, whenever I speak to someone who works for the NHS it seems like the best thing about that job is the fact that you can take 6 months paid when you are ill. I’ve been told some people are exploiting, and I guess mental health is something that’s more difficult to prove. That probably skews the figures a bit, along side those who are genuinely suffering from mental health issues.

Not surprised. NHS is so underfunded and understaffed. I have the utmost respect for all of them.

The NHS is the 4th largest non-military employer in the world and the 7th largest overall. Using absolute numbers is going to make it look worse and isn’t really useful for thinking or talking about the issue.

That’s the equivalent of 28000 people off for the whole month.

I’m confused. There are 1.5 million NHS staff in the UK, so this 626,000 figure suggests that around 2% of them are off sick for mental health reasons. That’s lower than the percentage of people who are receiving disability benefits for mental health reasons, suggesting that NHS staff are actually less mentally ill than expected. Seems like a classic example of reporting figures without any context.

The overwork is insane its seems the norm to have to work beyond your shift to deal with things.

Plus the nurses I have spoken to have often had a very hard time getting to take there full annual leave.

Combined with the responsibility of the work, and the quite harrowing situations that you have to deal with its no wonder that sick days for mental health are so common.

The only positive I guess is that they feel comfortable putting it down as mental health illness.

It annoys me that these types of articles throw around big eye catching numbers but rarely bother to break down what the rate is or how it compares to the average.

So let’s do it, or at least a back of an envelope approximation. We’re starting with 626,000 mental health days off in one month sounds bad. But there are 1,539,571 NHS staff in England,
158,375 in Scotland, 95,446 in Wales and 64,688 in NI going by the latest figures I can find – making for a total of 1,858,080.

The NHS is the largest employer in the U.K. … so you’d expect the number of sick days including those for mental health to also be a big number. But what’s the actual rate?

Just for the sake of argument let’s assume the number in the article is a typical month. It probably isn’t – that’s why there’s a news article in the first place – but it’s a figure we have. Let’s also assume a five day week (which we know isn’t true as the NHS works a bewildering number of shift patterns and provides a 24x7x365 servic, and a lot of workers do both paid and unpaid overtime.)

By my rough and ready arithmetic there would be over 37 million working days a month. So mental health days off are about 1.68% of the days worked … even using a fairly pessimistic set of assumptions.

So now we’re talking about an actual rate which is more useful – even if it doesn’t make for such an eye catching headline. But how does it compare to other employers?

Going by the ONS the average sickness rate for all workers in the U.K. has increased – 9.4 days per worker in 2024, up from 7.8 days in 2023. [It’s at a record high in all sectors not just the NHS.](https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/labourproductivity/articles/sicknessabsenceinthelabourmarket/2022)

But how about mental health related absence specifically? That’s a bit tricker and there are varying estimates: 7.9% of all sickness absence occurrences (Office for National Statistics, 2022) or 20% of sick days (Clifton Ingram, 2024).

So the U.K. average appears to be the equivalent of somewhere around 1-2 days of mental health related days absence per worker per year. The NHS rate looks to be a bit higher – maybe around 4 (assuming 250 working days a year and that 1.68% rate from earlier) – high but not mind blowingly so.

Feel free to poke holes in my reasoning and particularly my arithmetic (not my strong suite I freely admit so I might have ballsed it up somewhere) but my real point is that *decent journalism should actually be doing this not me* …. and furthermore it should then go on to investigate the various reasons for why any difference exists – and even better maybe even try to identify which is the most significant. Just throwing around a big scary sounding numbers isn’t useful … unless your underlying interest is manipulating public opinion rather than informing your readership.

They make it sound so evil all these sick days for mental health, until you do some basic maths, the media will do anything to turn people against each other with their rage click baits.

TL;DR

>If 625,834 mental‑health sick days occurred in a single month across NHS England, dividing by 1.37 million FTE implies roughly 0.46 sick days per FTE for that month on average, i.e., a little under half a day per FTE that month for mental‑health reasons alone.

***Roughly 0.46 sick days per FTE for that month on average, guess that isn’t newsworthy though.***

Ful version:

NHS England employs about 1.37 million staff on a full‑time equivalent (FTE) basis in hospitals and community services; on a headcount basis it’s roughly around 1.5 million people in England overall, excluding most GP practice staff from the direct-employment figure.

### Workforce size

>- As of January 2025, total NHS workforce in England was 1.37 million FTE, excluding general practice staff from the count of direct NHS employment.

>- Broad descriptions from sector analysts put the NHS in England at around 1.5 million people by headcount, noting the difference between headcount and FTE when quoting “how many work for the NHS”.

### Putting 625,000 mental‑health sick days in context

>- If 625,834 mental‑health sick days occurred in a single month across NHS England, dividing by 1.37 million FTE implies roughly 0.46 sick days per FTE for that month on average, i.e., a little under half a day per FTE that month for mental‑health reasons alone.

>- Using a headcount of about 1.5 million would give around 0.42 days per person for that month, showing the same order of magnitude and reinforcing that it’s well under one day per staff member in that month on average.

### Notes on coverage and definitions

>- The 1.37 million FTE figure reflects staff in hospitals and community health services (the standard NHS England workforce series) and is the most appropriate denominator for per‑staff calculations of centrally reported sickness absence.

>- Headline “how many work for the NHS” statements often cite around 1.5 million people in England by headcount; headcount counts individuals regardless of part‑time status, whereas FTE aggregates contracted hours and is better for per‑staff-day rates.

How many consecutive days were taken off at a time per person?

How many total staff took time off for mental health?

Why is it showing the June figures for this year, but the average per month for 2019?

What is the ratio of sick days to staff count in June 2019 compared to June 2025?

Yes, it’s a lot of sick days in a month, but a simple total count of sick days doesn’t show how severe or widespread absences are. A few long absences by a small number of staff can produce the same number of sick days as many short absences by lots of staff.

Similarly, if the staff levels have risen, the raw number of sick days might rise even if the proportion of affected staff hasn’t.

Comparing a single month that could be unusually high (or potentially typical for excused sick leave during summer holidays, for example) against the average per month for the entire 2019, which will potentially smooth out such spikes, is not like-for-like and could exaggerate the problem. For all we know from the article, a smaller percentage of sick days may have been taken in June 2025 than in June 2019; as if that’s not the case, why hasn’t this direct comparison been made instead?

People in high stress jobs needing a mental health break? I’m okay with that. Let’s support NHS staff instead of low-key throwing them under the bus.