No One Talks About It: The Declining Mental Health of Young People in the Workplace.
Recent NHS survey finds that one in four young people in the UK suffer from a mental health condition reflecting an unwillingness from employers to support young people at work.
Credit: Mali Carlsen
There are many factors that can impact an individual in the workplace from the bereavement of the loss of a loved one to financial pressures and anxieties in a cost of living crisis era.
However, where the gap truly lies is in the lack of understanding and training of line managers that are welcoming a new generation of young workers that have different needs than previous generations.
Significant spikes in the increase of young people suffering from mental health conditions, experiencing suicidal thoughts and engaging in self harm were identified through results from the adult psychiatry morbidity survey highlighting what could be described as a mental health crisis in England and Wales. The key findings were:
The proportion of 16 to 24 year olds with a common mental health condition increased from 17.6% in 2007 and 18.9% in 2014, to 22.6% in 2023/24. The proportion was higher in women than men at each point.
Lifetime non-suicidal self-harm was reported by 3.8% of 16 to 74 year olds in 2007, rising to 6.4% in 2014 and 10.3% in 2023/24.
The proportion of adults screening positive rose for ADHD from 8.2% in 2007 and 9.7% in 2014, to 13.9% 2023/24.
The state of the nation’s mental health having reached an all time crisis forces us to look at the drivers of an issue that has reached such a global scale.
New research from the Youth Futures Foundation in their 2025 report on the key drivers behind the youth mental crisis also identified four pinnacle causes for the crisis:
Employment precarity and affordability pressures.
Declining sleep quality.
Social media and smartphone use.
Reduced children and youth services.
Importantly, we must investigate these drivers and take action in the form of improving the infrastructure of the system we operate underneath.
When consulting young people about how they felt employers dealt with mental health in the workplace, Jude Long, a 19 year old working in the finance sector, said; “It’s a very chaotic and constant work space which means that taking a break can be difficult.” He also shared that he feels that “men’s mental health is often neglected,” in his experience highlighting an undeniable lack of support for young professionals in the UK.
When asked about what he felt employers could be doing to better support young people’s mental health, Jude said; “I feel like they could do more to make us feel like we can talk openly about our mental health without pressuring us to always be performing at our absolute best.”
00In this vein we must look to the workplace as an environment that is impacting the mental health of young people significantly. Whether it be financial struggles, toxic colleagues or an overwhelming and unrealistic workload, young people are entering the workplace ultimately unprepared to adequately tackle these issues.
Myra May, Digital Marketing Executive at St Michaels Hospice described her own experience as a young person entering a working environment. Myra told us; “from my experience in the UK job market, I would say there’s definitely more awareness around mental health and neurodiversity which is a positive shift, but also, on the other hand I do think that there’s still a gap between awareness and actual understanding in practice.”
Credit: Myra May, Digital Marketing Executive, St Michaels Hospice
This identified gap in comprehension and action from employers has led to young people feeling misunderstood and unsupported and as Myra stated “you can’t be in an environment where you feel like people aren’t aware about how you actually work with things.”
Recent findings from the CIPD People Management Organisation also found this to be an issue, revealing new statistics that a third of workers say line managers lack training to assist neurodivergent colleagues, with some staff waiting more than three months for reasonable adjustments.
Credit: Unsplash
Identifying that this will inevitably “strain mental health in the long term.” Myra discusses the importance of training for employers so that they can be adequately prepared to handle and respond to the requirements of their employees. Discussing her own experience within the hospice, Myra explained that they had to undergo training in autism and how to respond appropriately to the demands of neurodiverse colleagues and clients, an approach that may prove beneficial for other establishments to adopt.
A YouGov survey carried out in the UK found that when requesting support for their neurodiversity at work, 35% said that their employer was ineffective, with 18% of those describing their employer as ‘very ineffective’ in supporting their needs.
When in conversation with Myra May on this issue, she described her own experiences with seeking support for her own mental health at work and said; “I actually had to go quite far out to actually reach out for this but I looked for an employment specialist and I feel that there’s not enough awareness on this being an option but what an employment specialist does is they represent you on your behalf.”
Credit: Myra May, Digital Marketing Executive, St Michaels Hospice
These resources are evidently not made as accessible as they should be for young people and could make a transformative difference to our workforce and how it operates to support the needs of employees. As Myra states, support like this is invaluable “because sometimes we can’t say it ourselves.”
There is no one size fits all type of support, but equipping young people with the ability to put such things in place is crucial moving forward and is something that Myra feels “will make such a difference not just to productivity but also to your confidence because no one tells you how to navigate your mental health and how to fit it into the job market when you graduate.”