More than 100 health services staff have been off work with stress, it’s been revealed.

Figures released following a Freedom of Information request show that in the current financial year a total of 117 Department of Health and Social Care employees have been on stress-related absence.

In 2017-18, 252 were absent with stress.

The FoI request asked for figures on the numbers on stress leave, broken down by profession.

In each year since 2011, care workers made up the highest proportion of those on stress leave followed by nursing and midwifery staff.

There were 96 care workers off with stress last year and 66 nurses and midwives.

A total of 1,491 DHSC staff have been on stress leave since 2011.

But the department noted: ’An absence is recorded for the year it commences in. If it goes over the year end, then one person may account for absences in several years.

’The reasons for absence are self-reported, and many stress-related absences have multiple factors, although the individuals may feel that work is the deciding factor.’

Public sector staff sickness rates in the island have rocketed, with the cost of days lost equating to £9.5m, a report produced by the Office of Human Resources last year revealed.

It showed that stress is the biggest cause of staff absences at 20%.

The report, which was laid before Tynwald in November, covered 7,411 public sector workers and found that 11.76 days were lost per full time equivalent in the 12 months to the end of March last year.

This was an increase of two days (21%) compared with the previous year.

The top reasons for absence were stress - both work and personal - at 20.3%; musculoskeletal at 16.8%, and operations/hospitalisation at 10.5%.

It adds:’The precise causes of this increase are not fully known, but increased workloads and change management may be additional factors.’