Londiwe Buthelezi
29 October 2026
A mid-level employee at a Johannesburg firm has been struggling with anxiety for months, missing sleep, dreading Monday mornings, barely holding a smile through meetings. She has told no one at work. When she finally takes a day off, she calls it a stomach bug rather than admit what is actually wrong. She is not being dishonest so much as protecting herself, worried that naming her anxiety out loud might change how her manager sees her, or quietly cost her the next promotion. Her story is not unusual. It is, according to the data, closer to the norm.
The scale of the problem in South Africa is striking. Research from the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG) has found that more than half of employed South Africans live with a diagnosed mental health condition, with depression, clinical stress, anxiety and burnout among the most common. Despite this, only 57 percent of employees feel comfortable talking to their managers about mental health concerns, and fewer than half say they trust their supervisors with sensitive personal information. The result is a workforce in which struggle is common, but disclosure is rare: employees quietly managing conditions like depression and burnout while presenting as though nothing is wrong.
The pressure driving this goes beyond mental health alone. A SADAG Working Life Survey found that six in ten South African workers wished they could afford to resign, while nearly half reported feeling unhappy at the start of the working week. Lyn Labuschagne, SADAG’s Corporate Wellness Manager, has described the pattern the organisation sees daily. “At SADAG, we receive calls every day from employees who are feeling overwhelmed, anxious, burnt out, or struggling to cope with the pressures of work and life,” she has said. It is a reminder that workplace stress in South Africa is rarely just about the job itself; it is layered onto economic insecurity, job losses, and colleagues quietly absorbing the workload of positions companies have chosen not to refill.
SADAG founder Zane Wilson has been direct about where responsibility now sits. Reflecting on the organisation’s workplace research, she has called for companies to move beyond token gestures and build environments where mental health is treated as integral to how a business functions, not an afterthought bolted onto wellness week. That shift requires more than a poster in the break room. It means training managers to recognise early signs of burnout and distress, building genuine channels, anonymous where necessary, for employees to raise concerns without fear, and treating a request for accommodation, whether that is flexible hours, reduced workload during a difficult period, or time off for treatment, as a normal part of managing people rather than a red flag.
Disability and mental health inclusion advocates argue the stakes go further still. For employees managing conditions like depression, anxiety or neurodivergence, meaningful accommodation is not a favour extended out of kindness, it is what allows them to do their jobs well and stay employed. Some South African companies have begun experimenting with peer-led approaches, employee resource groups where colleagues who have navigated similar struggles create informal spaces for connection and support, alongside more formal channels like employee assistance programmes. Where these have taken root, organisations report improvements not just in wellbeing but in retention and morale, evidence that supporting mental health and running a functional business are not competing priorities.
For the employee in our opening scenario, and the many South Africans she represents, what would change everything is not necessarily more awareness campaigns, but the quiet, practical assurance that naming a mental health struggle at work will be met with support rather than suspicion. Until that trust is built, workplace stigma will keep doing what it does best: pushing real struggles behind closed doors, dressed up as stomach bugs and headaches, while the cost, to people and to productivity, keeps quietly accumulating.
