On the whole, research suggests that the mental health of workers is steadily deteriorating. While this phenomenon transcends borders, it does not affect employees in the same way depending on their country of residence, a recent global study reveals.
The McKinsey Health Institute surveyed over 30,000 employees in 30 countries to get an idea of their overall wellbeing, taking into account their physical, mental, social, and spiritual health. Overall, respondents seem to be doing well, even if the research institute found marked disparities between countries.
Workers in Japan are particularly dissatisfied with their wellbeing: only a quarter of them consider themselves to be in good health, which is the lowest level recorded by the institute.
This dissatisfaction among Japan’s workers may be linked to the fact that the country is known for its culture of hard work. Burnout-related suicides are a public-health issue that the government takes very seriously, which is why it introduced an overtime cap of 100 hours a month in 2018 to help prevent the risk of overwork.
Japan is followed in the McKinsey Health Institute ranking by the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Some 43% of British workers claim to be in good health, compared with 44% of their Dutch counterparts.
The top of the ranking – that is, those who are the most dissatisfied with overall health – is occupied by developed countries, such as France (no. 4), New Zealand (no. 5) and Canada (no. 6). Curiously, Turkey has the highest percentage of positive scores (78%) of those surveyed.
China, too, is one of the countries where employees seem to be faring best: three quarters of them claim to be in good mental, physical, social and spiritual health.
This statistic is surprising given that China is experiencing an unprecedented employment crisis, particularly affecting young people. The latter are facing such mass unemployment that local authorities have decided to stop releasing figures by age group.
While 57% of workers worldwide claim to be in good health, the McKinsey Health Institute highlights a certain lack of energy among its panel of respondents: more than a third of workers surveyed in 29 of the 30 countries studied reported feeling exhausted. Read the report in more detail here.
In the meantime, here are the 10 countries where workers are least satisfied with their general state of health:
1. Japan
2. UK
3. Netherlands
4. France
5. New Zealand
6. Canada
7. Australia
8. South Korea
9. Poland
10. Germany