The economic cost of SA’s mental health crisis.

By some measures South Africans are the second most stressed employees in the world. Lump the impact of Covid-19 on top of this and it’s easy to see why our country is facing a mental health crisis. Mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety cost the economy more than R200bn a year through people missing work and “presenteeism”, a situation in which employees are at work but perform at lower levels, primarily as a result of mental ill health.