Burnout, depression, anxiety disorder and other mental illness are the most common causes of occupational disability in Germany after a new Swiss Life study. According to an analysis of the insurance, mental illness is the cause of premature departure from working life by far more than a third of the cases- 37 percent of the cases.

"Only in the last ten years have we recorded an increase by 40 percent in this segment," said Amar Banerjee, head of Swiss Life Germany's insurance production in Garching near Munich. This should be accompanied by an increase in stress, pressure on performance and lack of compensation in working life, according to the company.

The insurer evaluated the data of its customers. Psychiatric disorders are followed by diseases of the locomotor system with a 24-percent before accidents with a nearly 14-percent. Swiss Life, according to its own information, is number seven in the German market for professional disability insurance, absolute figures the company did not mention.

Women at risk as men

The analysis, however, coincides with the figures of the German Federal Pension Insurance in Berlin. Women are obviously much more at risk than men: according to the Swiss Life study 44 percent of women's professional disabilities are reduced to a mental illness, men are only 28 percent. In addition, women are more likely to become mentally ill at an early age, and these diagnoses do not increase in men until the second half of their lives.

Display Display

The trend in the long-term comparison is particularly clear: the statutory pension insurance of the federal government paid 1983 less than ten percent of occupational retirement pensions due to mental disorders, 2017 it was already almost half of - 41.186 of 83.583 cases.

Increase of 40 percent

Pension insurance also recorded a particularly strong increase in mental illness over the past ten years: 2018 allowed over 170.000 stationary rehabilitations due to mental illness, over 50.000 more than ten years before. This also corresponds to an increase of 40 percent.

Pension insurance specialists do not assume, however, that German citizens are now becoming more mentally ill than in previous decades, but merely that depression, burnout and other illnesses are better recognised today and thus more frequently diagnosed.