- Half of millennials and 75% of Gen Z have left a job due to mental health reasons, according to a study conducted by Mind Share Partners, SAP, and Qualtrics published in Harvard Business Review.
- Millennials are more embracing of therapy than previous generations, destigmatizing mental health in the process.
- The statistic highlights several issues plaguing millennials: a rise in depression and "deaths of despair" among the generation; unaffordable living costs; and burnout.
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Millennials are bringing mental health to the forefront in the workplace.
Half of millennials and 75% of Gen Z have left a job due to mental health reasons, according to a study conducted by Mind Share Partners, SAP, and Qualtrics published in Harvard Business Review. The study, which looked at mental health challenges and stigmas in the US workplace, polled 1,500 respondents ages 16 and older working full-time.
That's significantly higher than the overall percentage of respondents who have left a job for mental health reasons - 20%, according to the study. This indicates a "generational shift in awareness," wrote the authors of the report, Kelly Greenwood, Vivek Bapat, and Mike Maughan.
That shift is no surprise, considering that millennials have also become known as "the therapy generation." They're cognizant about their mental health and helping to destigmatize therapy, Peggy Drexler wrote in an essay for The Wall Street Journal.
Millennials, she said, see therapy as a form of self-improvement - and they also suffer from a desire to be perfect, leading them to seek help when they feel they haven't met their expectations.
But their inclination towards therapy also highlights some of the biggest problems plaguing the generation.
Depression and "deaths of despair" are becoming more common among millennials
Depression is on the rise among millennials - there's been a 47% increase in major depression diagnoses since 2013, according to a Blue Cross Blue Shield report. And a follow-up Blue Cross Blue Shield study found that millennials are less healthy than Gen Xers were at their age, and more likely to be less healthy as they age.
More millennials are also dying "deaths of despair" - deaths related to drugs, alcohol, and suicide, reported Jamie Ducharme for TIME, citing a report by public-health groups Trust for America's Health and Well Being Trust. While these deaths have increased across all ages in the past 10 years, they've increased the most among younger Americans, reported Ducharme.
They claimed the lives of 36,000 American millennials in 2017 alone, according to the report. Drug overdoses are the most common cause of death.
There are a few reasons behind the uptick, one of which is that young adults are more inclined to engage in risk-taking behaviors. However, the report also identified other structural factors at play - namely the many financial problems millennials are facing: student loan debt, healthcare, childcare, and an expensive housing market.
These four costs are part of The Great American Affordability Crisis plaguing millennials that's putting them financially behind.
Read more: 'Deaths of despair' are taking more lives of millennial Americans than any other generation
Burnout is also a problem
Cases of burnout have also been increasing at an alarming rate over recent years, reported Business Insider's Ivan De Luce. The World Health Organization recently classified burnout as a syndrome, medically legitimizing the condition for the first time.
It's a growing problem in today's workplace because of trends like rising workloads, limited staff and resources, and long hours - particularly for millennials, who consider themselves the "burnout generation."
In fact, 86% percent of overall respondents in the Mind Share Partners, SAP, and Qualtrics study said a company's culture should support mental health. "Mental health is becoming the next frontier of diversity and inclusion, and employees want their companies to address it," wrote the authors.
They added: "It is not surprising then that providing employees with the support they need improves not only engagement but also recruitment and retention, whereas doing nothing reinforces an outdated and damaging stigma."
