London - Nearly a third of fit notes issued by GPs are for psychiatric problems, says an NHS report.
This makes them the most common reason for people to take time off work, ahead of musculoskeletal diseases.
There was a 14% rise in notes relating to anxiety and stress between 2015-16 and 2016-17.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists said the findings were "alarming" and pointed to a need for more to be done to help get people back to work. Fit notes is the formal name given to what were once called sick notes.
The new data analysed more than 12 million of them, issued over almost two and a half years from GP practices across England. Around half of the notes had a known diagnosis. It was the first time this information had been collected from GPs and analysed. Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, said: "These figures explain why the NHS is now putting mental health front and centre, in what was recently independently described as 'the world's most ambitious effort to treat depression, anxiety and other common mental illnesses'."(FA)
