Generation Anxious: Why ordinary ups and downs are turning the young into ‘can’t cope’ workers

Growing up you always know that one day soon you’ll be heading off to work. Money, responsibility, a sense of purpose and a precious first step on the ladder to adult success. Isn’t that what your parents and teachers promised you?

It turns out they were wrong. More and more young people are feeling overwhelmed and stressed about work, while the number of people seeking treatment for their mental health is soaring. Some believe these are signs we are facing a true epidemic of despair and breakdown, but others wonder if the younger generation is simply failing to understand that dealing with the curveballs life throws is part of the deal and helps us build resilience.

The recent Burnout Report from the charity Mental Health UK showed that one-third (35 per cent) of workers aged 18 to 24 needed time off last year due to poor mental health, compared with one in 10 workers aged 55 and above.

The younger ones cited being regularly required to work unpaid overtime or taking on extra hours to deal with the increased cost of living as causes of their stress, while a similar proportion of the 25- to 34-year-olds blamed the stress of a high workload or job loss fears.

A sick-note culture is growing, with 29 per cent of workers aged 25 to 34 taking time off in 2024 due to burnout, compared with 23 per cent the previous year, and a quarter of workers aged 35 to 44 taking time off in 2024, compared with a fifth in 2023. However, there is also a growing feeling that the increased awareness of mental health is responsible for younger workers not being able to distinguish between the ordinary downers of everyday life and a real mental health crisis.

Professor Clare Gerada, former president of the Royal College of General Practitioners, recently said Britain has a “problem with people of all ages wishing for a diagnosis or a label”. She appeared to be echoing former prime minister Tony Blair who warned against over-medicalising the “ups and downs of life”.

So why are younger people struggling more than those over 35?

There are some critical generational differences, such as the Covid pandemic and the ubiquity of the internet and smartphones, but parenting itself has changed in the last decades. While it used to be expected for children to mature in their late teens, today, up to the mid-twenties is the norm.

Parents oversee their children far more than previous generations, clearing problems out of the way lest their progeny should fail. Socially, parents have become more like friends to their children as they get older, whereas in previous decades, parents were to be separated from, and by early twenties, only involved in their adult children’s lives if there was an emergency.

Social media helps young people find friends, dates, hilarious cat videos, but it also shames and worries many, especially women.

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Professor Rosalind Gill at Goldsmiths College researched the effects of social media on women aged 18 to 28 in the book Perfect: Feeling Judged on Social Media. She spoke to more than 200 young women from a range of backgrounds across the UK and heard “that they really, really struggle”.

“They need to be absolute perfectionists because their friends and frenemies are watching, and judging, their every move.” There are signs that young men are starting to feel the same too. And all of this is leaking through into how youngsters behave at work as well as at home.

Is work different for the younger generation?

The workplace has also changed enormously in the last couple of decades. Just getting a job is more stressful as workplaces are squeezed. Making it through to the interview stage can seem almost impossible if you hear that 700 people are applying (an entry-level publishing job I recently heard about), and there will be multiple interviews, some in competitive full-day groups.

Technology is embedded in almost every job meaning you can get sifted out of the process before it has really begun and work rates are targeted, measured and analysed. Often the workday doesn’t include space when something is finished, for reflection and a feeling of achievement.

With smartphones, staff are always “on” and with social media there is a constant drive to show off and brand-build. A lot of it isn’t real, as Gill noted, but that doesn’t mean people can necessarily opt out, lest they feel left behind.

Therapist Cora Hilton explains that many clients in their twenties and thirties struggle with the difference between what they thought work would be like, and the reality.

“For this generation, work was expected to be the source of identity, meaning, success and happiness.” In fact, she says, they are faced with a reality that is starkly different and, on top of that, they are less economically secure than previous generations. Many want to be seen as successful but can’t always cope with the demands because they have been raised in an environment of damaging perfectionism, fear of failure, and looking for meaning in life.

By the time Gen Z, who are now as old as 28, arrived in the workplace, that vision had dissipated. But work itself can’t be swerved.

Hilton says that “with that age group there may be a lot of anger at having to play along, especially when older generations expect you to be enthusiastically looking to ‘prove yourself’.”

There is a feeling of: “Why should I put in my all when work often doesn’t pay a wage that can satisfy real concerns around the cost of living and an insecure future?”

A different perspective

Maturing has always come with challenges. Alan Percy, formerly head of counselling at the University of Oxford, is among a number of mental health professionals who believe that the older generation has unintentionally hurt young people by trying to remove every obstacle in their way, instead of making difficulties something to be negotiated. Success building on their own terms, is crucial to a young person’s confidence.

“Young people are being done a disservice if we say all their problems are due to mental health. It gives them false hope that they’ll find a medicalised answer to all life problems.

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“A better way would be to see them as feeling somewhat overwhelmed by life challenges, the difficulties in transition to independent adulthood.”

He quotes psychoanalyst and paediatrician Donald Woods Winnicott on the transition from adolescence to adulthood. “Winnicott said true independence doesn’t arrive until the young adult has let go of the idea of the omnipotent parent who is always available to solve all their problems.”

This could translate to how an infantilised generation is going into their workplace seeing a boss as parentis locus expecting them to fix their problems too and signing off with stress when it doesn’t happen. Somewhat different to the expectations older generations would have of their managers.

"Life is about realising that we have to cope with uncertainty and that we each have to learn to find our own way and develop the internal skills to cope with difficulties. Snow-plough parents who solve all the problems in their children’s lives mean they’ll always expect to turn to a parental figure to solve their problems for them.”

How can employers help?

Given the challenges to this generation and the financial situations that many companies are facing, there is no one-size solution. If there are problems, it seems best to offer to speak privately with individuals, to try and understand their problems, and then assess how serious they really are.

He believes it isn’t up to their workplaces to “solve” the problem, as that would only “create more of a dependency culture where young people expect some doctor/therapist/counsellor/parental figure to take responsibility for their feelings and their life and ‘make it all better’.”

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However, at the most extreme end, employers do not want to be faced with serious illness that may take months to treat, or even incidents of suicide in their workforce. According to Percy, depression is evident in most people, but it becomes much worse with distressing life events, such as bereavement, divorce, illness or redundancy.

“When people are young they may struggle more to cope with these life events, but that isn’t the same as needing a diagnosis of mental ill health.”

There also needs to be a shift of understanding from “we weren’t like that in our day” to a realisation that the days have changed; this was a generation that was parented differently and have spent their formative years shaped by experiences that are starkly different too.

Social media with its relentless aspiration of what things should be like compared to how things are is a huge factor. As is the fact of debt and how owning a home is out of reach in the way it simply wasn’t for older bosses.

Young people are not the only age group wanting help with their mental health, but they are perhaps among the most important. If they can be kept in good psychological shape, treated and paid fairly, with good job prospects and social connections, then they may find that work is one of the best things for them. It is up to us to show them how work can help solve problems and not just be the source of them.

Louise Chunn is the founder of therapist-matching platform Welldoing