How Does Mental Health Affect Work Performance, and How Can You Cope?
Mental health affects work performance by slowing concentration, memory, decisions and energy. Depression, anxiety and poor sleep each do this in different ways. Most of the lost work happens while people keep working, rather than on sick days.
In TELUS Health’s 2026 survey, 61% of Canadian workers worked while unwell at least weekly. Statistics Canada found just 7.5% took any stress or mental health time off in a year. Research-backed ways to cope include planning task starts, protecting sleep and using work-focused therapy.
At Canadian Psychological and Counselling Clinics, our psychologists and therapists treat work stress, anxiety and depression. This article shares general information and research, not medical advice.
What Do Mental Health and Productivity Statistics Show in Canada?
Canadian mental health and productivity statistics point to one pattern: people keep working while unwell. About 1 in 3 workers say mental health hurts their work. TELUS Health put the figure at 31% in its 2026 survey of 3,000 workers.
Measure | Figure | Source |
Canadians 15+ who met criteria for a mood, anxiety or substance use disorder in the past year | 18% (over 5 million) | Statistics Canada, 2022 data |
Workers who say mental health hurts their productivity | 31% | TELUS Health, 2026 |
Workers with high or very high work stress | 21.2% | Statistics Canada, 2023 |
Workers who took time off for stress or mental health in the past year | 7.5% | Statistics Canada, 2023 |
Workers who work while feeling unwell at least 1 day a week | 61% | TELUS Health, 2026 |
Productivity and mental health move together in the TELUS data. Workers with the lowest mental health scores lost 72.1 workdays a year. Workers with the highest scores lost 20.9.
Work related stress has clear sources. Statistics Canada named heavy workload as the top cause of work stress, at 23.7%. Balancing work and personal life came second, at 15.7%.
Workplace stress also varies by role. The most stressful jobs in that 2023 survey sat in health care and management. In health care and social assistance, 27.3% of workers reported high or very high stress. Among core-aged managers, the figure reached 37.3%.
The workplace mental health impact reaches employers too. Poor mental health costs Canada about $180 billion a year, the CSA Public Policy Centre estimates. Employers carry about $110 billion of it.
What Changes at Work When Your Mental Health Slips?
Mental health affecting work performance usually shows up in 4 areas: concentration, memory, energy and relationships. Mental illness affecting work often starts with small slips.
Workers describe the change in plain terms. Sophie Hennekam, Sarah Richard and François Grima studied workers with mental health conditions in 2020. They described lower-quality work, a slower pace and more mistakes.
Relationships at work shift as well. A short temper with coworkers is a common sign of stress and low mood. Our guide on getting angry over small things covers anger that shows up at work.
The impact of mental health on work performance also differs by condition.
How Does Depression Affect Work Performance?
Depression affects work performance mainly through memory, attention and planning problems. Research on depression and job performance points to thinking problems rather than low effort. Depression is one possible cause if you can’t focus at work.
These cognitive symptoms of depression are measurable. In 2014, Rock and colleagues pooled studies on depression and thinking skills. They found moderate deficits in executive function, memory and attention. Executive function covers planning, switching between tasks and controlling impulses.
Many people call this brain fog. Brain fog with depression can feel like reading the same email 3 times. So, can depression cause memory loss? Research links depression to measurable memory problems.
Depression in the workplace often looks like slow starts and missed details. The difference between depression vs sadness shows when low mood becomes depression. Depression therapy can include CBT and problem-solving for stressful work situations.
How Does Anxiety Affect Work Performance?
Anxiety affects work performance by pulling attention toward worry and possible threats. Michael Eysenck and colleagues described this in their attentional control theory in 2007.
Anxiety reduces the efficiency of thinking more than the quality of the work itself. People often keep their output steady by putting in extra effort. That effort can show up later as mental fatigue or mental exhaustion.
High functioning anxiety is not a formal diagnosis, but it describes this pattern. Deadlines get met while the strain builds underneath. Performance anxiety adds a specific trigger, such as presentations or reviews. Anxiety about work performance can then feed the next round of worry.
Anxiety at work can attach to one trigger or spread across the whole day. Workplace anxiety that lasts for weeks deserves a closer look. Work anxiety that disrupts sleep counts too. Anxiety therapy uses approaches such as CBT and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT).
What Causes Poor Concentration at Work?
Poor concentration at work has 5 common causes: stress, low mood, anxiety, poor sleep and ADHD. A short poor concentration span after one bad night is expected. Weeks of it point to something more.
Poor sleep costs most at work through lower output. Meagan Daley and colleagues studied insomnia in 948 Quebec adults in 2009. 76% of insomnia’s yearly cost came from reduced productivity at work. Missed workdays made up 14.7%.
ADHD is another cause, especially when focus problems go back to childhood. Anxiety and ADHD often appear together. Our guide on how to handle anxiety and ADHD at work together covers that overlap.
What Are the Signs of Poor Mental Health at Work?
Signs of poor mental health at work include 8 changes that last for weeks, not days:
- Repeated rereading of emails or instructions
- Slower decisions on routine tasks
- More mistakes than usual
- Forgotten meetings, tasks or details
- Longer hours for the same output
- Sunday-night dread about the week ahead
- Short temper with coworkers
- Withdrawal from colleagues and team breaks
Depression at work symptoms often add low energy and lost interest in tasks you once enjoyed. Compare these signs with burnout symptoms if they track only your job. Our guide to depression or just burnout explains the difference.
What Is Presenteeism, and Why Does Pushing Through Cost More?
Presenteeism means working while unwell, with lower output than usual. Absenteeism means missing work. For depression in Canada, presenteeism costs far more than absenteeism.
Sara Evans-Lacko and Martin Knapp compared depression at work across 8 countries in 2016. In Canada, presenteeism cost 2.7 times as much as absenteeism. The CSA Public Policy Centre values Canada’s yearly presenteeism losses at about $12 billion.
TELUS Health asked 3,000 Canadian workers how often they worked while unwell in early 2026. “Unwell” covered physical and mental health. TELUS counted lost days from absence and lower effort across a 240-day work year.
Days a week worked while unwell | Share of workers | Workdays lost per year |
Never | 39% | 17.2 |
1 day | 27% | 39.2 |
3 days | 9% | 58.6 |
5 days | 5% | 76.7 |
The survey shows a link. It does not prove that pushing through causes the loss. A Swedish study points the same way, though. Gunnar Bergström’s team followed about 6,250 workers in 2009. Some went to work sick on more than 5 days in a year. Their risk of more than 30 sick days the next year rose by 40% to 50%.
Workers in Hennekam’s 2020 study described the same problem. Hiding symptoms and forcing themselves to keep working went with worse performance. Accepting the condition, taking time off, treatment and open communication went with better performance.
This pattern explains why high functioning depression is easy to miss. Working while depressed can look fine from outside, until output drops.
Why Can Work Still Feel Hard After You Start Feeling Better?
Work can still feel hard because thinking problems can outlast low mood. Conradi and colleagues followed 267 primary care patients with depression for 3 years. They tracked cognitive problems, low energy and sleep problems.
During depressive episodes, those problems were present 85% to 94% of the time. During remission, they were still present 39% to 44% of the time. Rock’s 2014 review found the same pattern for attention and executive function.
Canada’s depression treatment guidelines come from the Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments (CANMAT). CANMAT sets functional recovery as the goal, including how you function at work. Feeling better and working at full capacity are 2 separate milestones.
Naming work problems with your provider keeps both goals in view. Medication or therapy first for depression compares both routes, if you are weighing options.
How Do You Get Through the Work Day With Depression or Anxiety?
Lower mental load and steadier energy make the work day easier to manage. These 8 strategies show how to get through the work day with depression. Learning how to work with depression means changing how the day is set up. Most have published research behind them, and most apply to anxiety too.
- Plan the start of one task. Write a cue, such as “At 9 a.m., I open the report and write one paragraph.” Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran reviewed 94 tests of this if-then planning in 2006. It had a medium-to-large effect on reaching goals. Starting is often the hardest step with depression.
- Write instructions down. Lists and written steps hold details your memory would otherwise carry. Boston University’s Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation lists written feedback and one-task-at-a-time plans among common workplace supports.
- Take short breaks for energy and longer breaks for hard thinking. Patricia Albulescu’s team reviewed 22 studies of breaks lasting 10 minutes or less in 2022. Short breaks raised energy and lowered fatigue. They did not lift overall performance, and demanding work may need longer breaks.
- Switch off after work. Jan Wendsche and Andrea Lohmann-Haislah reviewed 91 samples covering 38,124 employees in 2017. Mentally switching off was linked to less exhaustion and better task performance. Work life balance starts with a clear stop time each day. Work stress that follows you home also strains relationships. Read how stress affects your relationship for that side of it.
- Protect your sleep. A steady wake time helps keep your body clock regular. Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is one evidence-based option for ongoing sleep problems. Our therapy approach page explains how CBT works, including for sleep problems.
- Name the stressor. Canada’s National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace lists 13 workplace factors. Examples include workload management, civility and respect, and clear leadership and expectations. Naming the factor makes the problem specific enough to raise.
- Ask for one specific change. Statistics Canada surveyed workers with mental health-related disabilities who lacked needed workplace supports. 35% never told their employer what they needed. 56% felt uncomfortable asking, and 47% feared a negative outcome. Our guide, What Is Seasonal Depression?, includes 6 steps for telling your boss what you need.
- Bring your job into therapy. In 2012, Suzanne Lagerveld’s team compared 2 types of CBT for 168 workers on sick leave. The group whose therapy focused on work returned to full duties 65 days sooner. Symptoms improved in both groups.
Is It Okay to Take a Mental Health Day From Work?
Yes, taking a mental health day is okay, and few Canadian workers do it. In Statistics Canada’s 2023 survey, only 7.5% of workers took stress or mental health time off. That works out to 2.4 lost days per employed person. A mental health day can ease short-term exhaustion. An ongoing condition usually needs treatment as well.
Calling in sick for mental health follows your workplace policy and provincial rules. Those set what you need to say or provide.
Longer breaks fall under mental health leave, sometimes called stress leave or workplace stress leave. Mental health leave from work rules differ by province, territory and employer. A mental health leave in Alberta, for example, follows provincial employment standards. Federally regulated workers fall under the Canada Labour Code. This section is general information, not legal advice.
Time off on its own is not treatment. A 2020 Cochrane review looked at helping people with depression return to work. Combining work-focused steps with clinical treatment cut about 25 sick days a year. The review rated that evidence as moderate certainty.
Unsure whether you need more than a day off? Check these 15 signs it may be time to see a therapist.
Should You Quit Your Job for Your Mental Health?
Quitting can help when the job itself is the problem, but unemployment carries its own risks. Karsten Paul and Klaus Moser reviewed 324 studies in 2009. 34% of unemployed people had psychological problems, compared with 16% of employed people. Long-term studies suggested unemployment caused distress rather than simply following it.
Job quality matters as much as having a job. Peter Butterworth’s team published a study of 7,155 working-age Australians in 2011. Moving from unemployment into a poor-quality job worsened mental health, compared with staying unemployed. Poor quality there meant low control over work and low job security, among other strains.
The useful question is what about this job is hurting you, and whether it can change. A therapist can help you weigh the options. The decision stays yours.
How Do You Know You're Ready to Go Back to Work After a Mental Health Leave?
You are closer to ready when routines feel steady and a return plan exists. Most people go back in steps.
In Lagerveld’s Dutch study of 168 workers on sick leave, only 7% went straight back full-time. 99% had at least partly returned within a year. A graded return often starts with fewer hours or lighter duties.
Practical checks before going back to work after a mental health leave include:
- Regular sleep and wake times for at least a few weeks
- Enough energy for a full morning of focused tasks
- A written return plan agreed with your employer
- A follow-up appointment booked with your provider
What Can Managers Do to Support Employee Mental Health?
Managers support employee mental health by talking about it openly and adjusting work early. Sara Evans-Lacko and Martin Knapp compared 15 countries, including Canada, in 2018. Where managers more often avoided talking about depression, employees with depression took more days off.
Psychological safety makes those early conversations possible. Employee mental health support also includes clear workloads and regular check-ins. Canada Life’s free Workplace Strategies for Mental Health website offers tools for leaders.
Mental health in the workplace also depends on how teams work together. Our Mental Well-Being in the Workplace workshop covers resilience, psychological safety and manager skills.
How Can CPC Clinics Help With Work-Related Stress?
CPC Clinics offers work related stress counselling with psychologists and therapists, in person or online. Sessions can focus on work problems, such as slow starts, worry loops or a planned return.
Virtual therapy fits sessions around work hours. For people still working but running on empty, Executive Reset offers a structured, time-limited program.
Many of our psychologists offer direct billing to 30+ insurance providers. Coverage depends on your plan and your therapist’s designation, so check with your insurer before booking.
We offer a first conversation with no obligation, if you are ready.
Get help now if you are thinking about ending your life. Call 911 or your local emergency number. You can also contact a crisis line in your area.
What Do People Ask Most About Mental Health and Work Performance?
Should you work while depressed?
It depends on how severe your symptoms are and what support you have. Frequent working while sick is linked to more lost time later. In Bergström’s Swedish study, it raised the risk of long sick leave by 40% to 50%. A doctor or psychologist can help you decide.
Can depression affect your memory and concentration at work?
Yes. Depression can slow memory, attention and planning at work. Rock’s 2014 review found moderate deficits in all 3 areas. Many people notice it as rereading, forgetting tasks or slower decisions.
Is memory loss from depression permanent?
Memory and focus problems from depression often ease with recovery, though sometimes more slowly than mood. In Conradi’s 3-year study, cognitive problems appeared 39% to 44% of the time during remission. A clinician can check whether something else is involved.
Does anxiety affect your working memory?
Yes. Anxiety pulls attention toward worry, which leaves less room for the task in front of you. Attentional control theory describes this as a loss of efficiency. People often make up for it with extra effort, which drains energy.
Why am I suddenly making so many mistakes at work?
Sudden mistakes at work often trace back to stress, low mood, anxiety, poor sleep or ADHD. A change that lasts weeks is worth raising with a doctor or psychologist. ADHD counselling can help with routines and work systems if focus problems go back to childhood.
Why do I feel anxious at work but not at home?
Anxiety often attaches to specific triggers, such as deadlines, reviews or conflict with a coworker. Home may not hold those triggers. The reverse, anxiety at home but not at work, happens when home holds the stressors.
Is it normal to feel anxious about work every day?
Some work worry is common. 21.2% of Canadian workers report high or very high work stress, Statistics Canada found in 2023. Daily anxiety that disrupts sleep, appetite or focus for weeks is worth assessing with a professional.
What is the 3-3-3 rule for anxiety?
The 3-3-3 rule is a grounding exercise for moments of anxiety. You name 3 things you see and 3 sounds you hear. Then you move 3 parts of your body. It is a quick grounding tool, not a treatment for an anxiety disorder.
What does high-functioning depression look like at work?
High-functioning depression usually means meeting deadlines while feeling flat, drained or hopeless inside. It is not a formal diagnosis. Some people with high functioning depression meet criteria for persistent depressive disorder. That is a longer-lasting form of depression.
What should you do while you’re off work with depression?
Use the time for treatment, steady routines and a return plan. The 2020 Cochrane review found work-focused steps plus treatment cut about 25 sick days a year. Regular sleep and wake times help. So does a graded return agreed with your employer and provider.
Can you get EI for a mental health leave in Canada?
Yes, EI sickness benefits can cover mental health leaves if you meet the rules. They pay 55% of your average insurable earnings, up to a weekly maximum. Payments last up to 26 weeks. You need a medical certificate and 600 insured hours in the past 52 weeks. Check current rules on Canada.ca.