Young workers and mental health

Young members tell us that mental health is one of the major issues affecting them both at work and at home. UNISON believes mental health is a trade union issue and UNISON’s young members are actively campaigning for workplaces that are more mentally healthy.

In May 2022 we surveyed all UNISON’s young members on mental health and found that a shocking 81% had experienced a mental health problem in the last year.

The main mental health problems reported by young members were depression (88.2%) or anxiety (87.1%), but other mental health problems included anorexia, bulimia and disordered eating, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
19.8% said their mental health problems were related to work, and 59.3% said they were ‘partially’ related to their work.
Stress and workload have a major impact on young members’ mental health: over two-thirds of of young members said they “often feel stressed at work” and 59.7% agreed with the statement “No matter how hard I work, it’s difficult to get everything done”. A similar proportion (57.5%) said that they “find it difficult to switch off from work at the end of the day”.
Bullying and discrimination are also factors: 21.6% of young members said that they had been bullied at work, and 20.6% agreed that that had “experienced discrimination at work”. Over a quarter (28.6%) agreed with the statement “Staff are not treated with dignity”.

Read the full report here

That’s why we launched our campaign, Young Members Mental Health Matters!

In our campaign we wanted to recognise and highlight that mental health is a big issue for young workers. We also wanted to show young workers that being in a trade union can be important for individual support and for collectively improving workplaces.

We produced a set of resources to highlight the range of things UNISON does which improve mental health: supporting our members, bargaining and negotiating for better workplaces, and campaigning for the Right to Disconnect.

What can you do?

Share our videos on social media:

Supporting members

Taking action together

What is the Right to Disconnect?

You can order our postcards and leaflet on the online catalogue, including a leaflet about the Young Members Mental Health Matters campaign, a set of postcards about what UNISON does to make work better and more mentally healthy, and a leaflet explaining the Right to Disconnect.

And you can take the campaign back to your branches! Some ideas:

Start a conversation in your branch – particularly with younger workers
Think about surveying members on issues which contribute to mental health problems in the workplace
Organise a mental health awareness event
Negotiate a new mental health policy
Or a (local) Right to Disconnect
Or another policy affecting work-life balance like a flexible working policy, or wellbeing days off
Recruit a new Health and Safety Officer, or a Welfare Officer