Serious mental health claims in Australia rose 14.7% in a single year. Here’s what’s actually driving the increase, and why it isn’t what most leaders assume.
Mental health conditions now account for 12% of all serious workers’ compensation claims in Australia, the highest proportion ever recorded. According to Safe Work Australia’s most recent Key Work Health and Safety Statistics report, there were 17,600 serious mental health claims in 2023–24, up 14.7% on the 15,300 claims recorded the year before.1 Over the past decade, serious psychological claims have grown 161%, making them by far the fastest-growing injury category in the country.2
For anyone leading people, teams, or an HR function, this isn’t an abstract statistic. It’s a live compliance and cost issue, and the regulatory ground underneath it is shifting faster than most organisations have adjusted to.
The severity is the real story
Volume alone understates the problem. Psychological injury claims are also far more expensive and far slower to resolve than physical ones.
The median compensation paid for a serious mental health condition claim is $67,400, more than four times the $16,300 median across all serious claims.3 Workers with a psychological injury are off work for a median of 35.7 weeks, almost five times longer than the typical physical injury claim.4 Recovery outcomes are worse too: return-to-work rates for psychological injuries sit at around 76.5%, compared with 90.2% for physical injuries.5
Zoomed out further, the Australian Productivity Commission has estimated the total cost of mental ill-health and suicide to the national economy at $200–220 billion a year, including $40–70 billion in direct costs such as healthcare and lost productivity.6
It’s not what most people assume
The instinct, understandably, is to point at workload. The data says otherwise. Looking at the causes behind serious mental stress claims in 2023–24:
| Cause | Share of claims |
| Harassment and workplace bullying | 33.2% |
| Work pressure | 24.2% |
| Exposure to violence and harassment | 15.7% |
| All other causes | 26.9% |
Source: Safe Work Australia, Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 20257
Bullying and harassment, not workload, is the single largest driver of serious mental health claims in Australia. That’s worth sitting with. The public conversation about work and mental health tends to centre on being “too busy” or “under-resourced.” The claims data tells a different story: the biggest identifiable driver is how people are treated day to day. That reframes the problem as a leadership, culture, and systems issue as much as a staffing or workload one.
Who and where it’s hitting hardest
Mental health claims aren’t distributed evenly across the workforce. Female workers report mental health conditions in 17.2% of their total claims, compared with 8.2% for male workers.8
Measured by frequency rate (claims per million hours worked, which accounts for workforce size), several sectors sit well above the national average of 6.8 serious claims per million hours:9
| Sector | Frequency rate (per million hours) |
| Agriculture, forestry and fishing | 10.0 |
| Public administration and safety | 9.6 |
| Transport, postal and warehousing | 9.4 |
| Manufacturing | 9.4 |
| Health care and social assistance | 9.3 (highest absolute volume) |
Health care and social assistance has the highest total number of claims of any sector, even though its frequency rate is slightly lower than the others above it. This points to sheer workforce size compounding an already elevated risk profile.
The regulatory ground is shifting fast
Australia’s psychosocial safety regulation has moved quickly since 2021, and the pace has picked up further through 2025 and into 2026:
NSW led the way, introducing the country’s first dedicated Code of Practice for managing psychosocial hazards in 2021. National model WHS Regulations followed in 2022, formally requiring employers to identify and control psychosocial hazards in most jurisdictions. Western Australia followed in 2022; Tasmania, Queensland, and the Commonwealth jurisdiction came in 2023.10
Victoria’s OHS (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025 commenced in December 2025, and WorkSafe Victoria has since established a dedicated Psychosocial Inspectorate.11
SafeWork NSW became a standalone regulator in July 2025, with its own Commissioner, and is now required to report to the Minister on psychosocial complaints and notices every six months.12
From 1 July 2026, the NSW Managing Psychosocial Hazards Code of Practice becomes a mandatory compliance benchmark rather than optional guidance. Businesses must either follow it or be able to demonstrate an equivalent or higher standard of risk management.13
In February 2026, NSW passed the Work Health and Safety Amendment (Digital Work Systems) Act 2026, the first law in Australia to explicitly regulate the psychosocial risks created by algorithms, AI, automation, and other digital work systems used to allocate, monitor, or evaluate work. It introduces a specific duty requiring employers to ensure these systems don’t put worker health and safety at risk, and gives unions expanded rights to inspect digital work systems where a breach is suspected.14 This is worth flagging for any organisation using automated scheduling, productivity tracking, or performance-monitoring tools — these now sit squarely inside WHS obligations.
The direction is consistent across every jurisdiction: psychosocial hazards are being regulated exactly like physical ones. A well-being calendar or an EAP line in the employee handbook is no longer, on its own, a credible risk management strategy. A March 2026 Industrial Relations Commission decision involving the NSW Department of Education reinforced this directly: having controls written down is not enough. Organisations need evidence that those controls are actively operating in practice.15
Three questions worth asking this week
- Could you show a regulator evidence of active psychosocial risk controls, not just a written policy, if asked tomorrow?
- When did you last measure psychological safety at the team level, rather than relying on annual engagement survey averages?
- Given that bullying and harassment (not workload) are the leading driver of claims, does your current risk management approach actually target that, or is it mostly aimed at reducing workload?
Sources
- Safe Work Australia, Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2025 (published October 2025)
- Safe Work Australia, Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2025
- Safe Work Australia, Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2025
- Safe Work Australia, Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2025
- Safe Work Australia, WHS return-to-work data, 2025
- Australian Productivity Commission, Inquiry into Mental Health
- Safe Work Australia, Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2025
- Safe Work Australia, Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2025
- Safe Work Australia, Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2025, industry frequency rate data
- SafeWork NSW, Psychological Health and Safety Strategy 2024–2026
- WorkSafe Victoria; Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025 (Vic)
- SafeWork NSW, regulatory governance updates, 2025
- SafeWork NSW, Managing Psychosocial Hazards Code of Practice, compliance benchmark effective 1 July 2026
- Work Health and Safety Amendment (Digital Work Systems) Act 2026 (NSW), passed 12 February 2026
- NSW Industrial Relations Commission, decision involving the NSW Department of Education, March 2026
This article reflects publicly available data current as at the time of writing (2023–24 claims year, the most recently published Safe Work Australia figures). Compensation and claims data is periodically revised — figures should be checked against the live Safe Work Australia dataset before relying on them for compliance decisions. This article is general information, not legal advice.
