05th October 2026
Why Workplace Mental Health Support Must Evolve
Employees’ mental health needs can change throughout their careers as financial pressures, parenthood, caring responsibilities, health changes and job insecurity intersect with work. Dr Anna Sandall argues employers should understand their workforce, remove barriers to support and offer preventative, proportionate help before difficulties develop into more serious mental health problems.
This article was written by Dr Anna Sandall and published in HR News.
An employee’s mental health needs at the beginning of their career may look very different several years later. They may enter the workplace navigating financial pressures, continuing study and the challenge of establishing themselves professionally. Later, they might experience relationship changes, fertility treatment, parenthood, caring responsibilities, bereavement, menopause, redundancy or concerns about retirement.
None of these experiences will affect everybody in the same way, and employers should avoid assuming somebody needs support simply because of their age, gender or circumstances. But they do illustrate an important point, which is that mental health is dynamic and influenced by life stages.
We all move around a mental health continuum throughout our lives. Our position on that continuum can change according to what is happening around us, including both health events and life events. If employees’ needs change, workplace mental health strategies need to be capable of changing with them.
Why life events matter to workplace mental health
Poor mental health rarely has one simple cause. Our vulnerability is shaped by a combination of factors, including genetics, temperament, socioeconomic circumstances and previous experiences. Alongside this sit the stresses we encounter day to day, which can change significantly throughout our lives.
Most people will manage individual pressures well, but difficulties can arise when several begin to compound. An employee might, for example, be managing increased financial pressure at the same time as caring for an aging parent and facing uncertainty about their role. Someone else may be returning from parental leave while struggling with sleep and their own or their partner’s mental health.
Together, those experiences can begin to stretch somebody’s ability to cope. This is why employers need to look beyond whether somebody’s mental health difficulty is technically work related. Someone struggling with performance at work may be experiencing financial worries, family pressures, health changes in addition to workplace demands. Work and life do not exist independently of one another.
Different stages can bring different pressures
There are points throughout working life when certain pressures may become more common.
For people entering the workforce, financial wellbeing can be particularly important. Employees may be managing rent, student debt or other financial commitments alongside the pressure to establish themselves professionally. They can be juggling additional study alongside grappling with their first job.
Onebright data has also shown that men aged 18 to 25 accessing employer-funded mental health support are particularly likely to present with work-related concerns. That should prompt employers to consider whether younger employees have the confidence, support and management structures they need as they begin their careers.
Later, parenthood can introduce a completely different set of challenges. Employers have become better at recognising perinatal mental health issues, but paternal mental health remains comparatively overlooked. Fathers and partners can also experience significant difficulties following the arrival of a child. Divorce, and separation from children can be a significant factor in men seeking mental health support.
As careers progress, the pressures can change again. Employees may increasingly find themselves balancing senior roles with caring responsibilities, concerns about their children’s wellbeing, relationship changes or supporting ageing parents. For some women, perimenopause and menopause may coincide with many of these pressures. People suffer health events. Symptoms such as anxiety or low mood can sometimes be interpreted solely as a mental health condition without the wider context being recognised.
Job insecurity can also become significant. Restructuring, redundancy and the changing nature of work, including the impact of AI, mean employees at different stages of their careers may be reassessing their skills, security and future.
These examples should not become labels, as the point is that employers need sufficient breadth in their support to respond when these pressures do arise.
The employees who can fall through the gap
One of the biggest risks with workplace mental health provision is designing support predominantly around people who are already unwell. Clinical treatment is vital for employees who need it, but mental health provision should extend further upstream.
Consider someone experiencing financial difficulty. They may be losing sleep, finding it harder to concentrate and becoming increasingly anxious, but they may not see themselves as somebody who requires psychological treatment. They may turn to substance use to cope with the stress, which compounds existing problems and impairs occupational performance and threatens job security.
Read this article in full here: Why mental health support needs to change as employees’ lives change
