The Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and now the cost of living crisis are hurting the morale of European workers in an unprecedented way, according to a new study by the wellness services company LifeWorks.
More than 500 people took part in an online survey in April in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Poland. Nearly half said they were affected by stress more than before the pandemic. A third said their mental health was negatively affecting productivity.
Overall, 41% of LifeWorks respondents were considered at high risk of having a mental health disorder, such as anxiety and depression. This is nearly triple the percentage reported in surveys conducted in 2017-2019, before the pandemic.
"This period of time will be important in history, I think, for the relentless upheaval that populations are going through," LifeWorks leader Paula Allen told Euronews Next.
"When you think about what Europeans have been through recently, you really understand why this happened. We had the pandemic, the economic impact of the pandemic, the isolation, the feeling of losing control," she said.
"And then when we started to see light at the end of the tunnel, the war in Ukraine appeared."
Young people, women, parents and those with lower incomes are struggling the most, the report said. The link between income and mental health is "very strong," Allen said. Now employees are anxious about high inflation and the fear that they cannot make ends meet. More than a third of respondents said they have no emergency savings.
