Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number of days of sick leave taken by staff in his Department for mental health reasons in each year since 2010.

The Department information systems record sickness absence relating to “mental health disorders”, but not for “mental health reasons”. Mental health disorders can include disorders such as stress, anxiety, depression and long term mental illness.

The following table shows the broader category of how many days have been lost in the Department due to sickness absence relating to mental health disorders since 2010.