Article · 15 September 2026
Nine in ten UK adults are under high or extreme stress, the same as for three years. What is changing is the silence around it.
Nine in ten UK adults reported high or extreme pressure and stress in the past year, a figure that has held at 91% for three years running. That consistency would be almost reassuring if it weren't for another, more concerning trend: more workers, especially younger ones, are now uncomfortable discussing their stress with a manager. Over one in three workers (35%) said they would not feel comfortable raising high or extreme stress with their manager, an increase of 3% on the 2025 report. Among 18-24-year-olds, the figure is 39%, up 5% in a single year.
Stress is holding steady. The willingness to talk about it is going backwards. That points less to a failure of resilience and more to a breakdown in communication.
Mental Health UK's Burnout Report 2026, based on YouGov polling of 4,502 UK adults, of whom 2,591 were workers, was carried out in November 2025 and published in January 2026. It reveals a steady but worrying picture.
One in five workers (20%) took time off sick due to poor mental health caused by stress, level with the previous year. Among 18-24-year-olds, it was two in five (39%). Just one in four workers (27%) said mental health at work is genuinely prioritised and supported through action and resources, while almost one in five (18%) saw it as a tick-box exercise.
Managers, often the critical first point of contact, are hamstrung. Almost one in three workers (29%) said their employer raises awareness about mental health, but managers lack the time, training and resources to provide meaningful support. And when people do take time off, support on their return is patchy at best: one in four (27%) of those who took time off due to extreme pressure or stress received no support when they came back, and only 17% had a formal return-to-work plan.
The workplace stressors are all too familiar. A high or increased workload (42%), regularly working unpaid overtime (33%), and fears around redundancy and job security (32%) top the list.
The tendency to treat rising stress as an individual failing, and to respond with resilience workshops, wellbeing apps and breathing exercises in the lunch hour, misses a fundamental point. It places the burden on the person under pressure to cope better with the conditions creating the pressure.
Stress driven by workload and unpaid overtime is a structural issue. Job insecurity is a structural issue. A manager without the time, training or resources to have a conversation is a structural issue. And a worker who chooses silence is not showing a deficit of resilience. They are making a rational judgement about whether it is safe to speak.
In The People Code, Resilience and Communication are separate pillars for a reason. Resilience allows us to absorb pressure and recover. Communication is the channel that lets pressure surface before it causes damage. When communication shuts down, resilience has nothing to work with. People carry the load alone until they cannot, and the first anyone knows about it is the sick note.
A growing reluctance to speak up is, in plain terms, a psychological safety failure. Awareness campaigns have taught people the language of mental health without building the relationships of trust in which that language can actually be used.
Young workers are bearing a disproportionate share of workplace stress, and their increasing reticence to talk about it should worry every employer. They were the group most likely to report stress from a high or increased workload (57%), regularly working unpaid overtime (47%), feeling isolated at work (45%) and fear of redundancy or job security (43%). They are the most likely to take time off, and they are becoming less willing, not more, to say why.
This matters well beyond the office. The report lands in the middle of the UK's economic inactivity crisis, with poor mental health among young people cited as a key driver. Sir Charlie Mayfield's Keep Britain Working review called for workforce health to be a shared responsibility between organisations, staff and the NHS, with employers focusing on prevention. Brian Dow, Mental Health UK's chief executive, described the current position as trying to accelerate with the handbrake on.
The young people we worry about in schools and on waiting lists do not lose their need for connection and guidance when they turn 18. They walk into workplaces that assume they arrive fully formed, and without adequate scaffolding, silence and absence are often the only signs.
Through the ASPIRE framework, Support is not simply a service to be signposted. It is a relationship someone can actually use. For many young adults, the workplace is one of the few places they spend sustained time around older, more experienced people. That makes it one of the last remaining members of the village around them, whether employers recognise this or not.
Communities work because people notice when something is wrong. Someone asks. Someone listens. The honest answer is given because there is trust that the consequences won't be punitive. None of that requires a policy. It requires managers who have the time and skill to ask, and a culture where honesty doesn't cost you your place.
The practical steps follow from the data itself. Managers need protected time and proper training to hold early, meaningful conversations about workload and wellbeing, not a slide in an induction deck. Regular check-ins should be routine rather than crisis-driven, so that raising stress becomes ordinary rather than exceptional. Return to work needs planning, because when only 17% have a formal return-to-work plan, relapse becomes the likely outcome for many of the rest. And the structural stressors, workload and unpaid overtime above all, should be treated as a management responsibility, not a wellbeing initiative.
Stress is holding steady. The willingness to talk about it is going backwards.
The real test of workplace mental health is not how many people know the words. It is whether a young employee feels safe enough to tell their manager they're struggling before it becomes a sick note. Right now, fewer would than last year.
These questions sit at the heart of my forthcoming book, Rebuilding the Village, which argues that community infrastructure, including the workplace, is the missing variable in youth wellbeing and economic inactivity. You can join the waitlist at rebuildingthevillagebook.com.
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