Occupational safety and health in Europe - state and trends 2023 
European Agency for Safety and Health at Work – EU-OSHA 24 
3.1 Psychosocial risks at work 
During the last 30 years, the scientific, political and practical discussions on psychosocial risks and 
preventive measures against psychosocial risks have gained strong importance. After a period of doubts 
and resistance, today they are regarded as risks of the same severity as the classical physical safety 
and health risks.4 (Chapter 1 covers the psychosocial risk aspect; for the prevalence of mental diseases 
and the burden of mental diseases see Chapter 2.2. 5) 
Looking at the steady increase of certain psychosocial risk indicators at workplace level, either the risks 
have increased and/or the number of people working in occupations with higher psychosocial risks 
has increased. 6,7 This is valid , for example,  for the indicator time pressure, for example, in delivery 
services, transport, and often also clerical work; the workforce has grown in sectors where emotional 
demands from dealing with difficult clients, customers, pupils or patients are common; there are al so 
more workers employed (or self-employed) in interactional occupations, for example, in call centres, or 
in occupations with a high level of emotional tensions, for example, education, health and care. 
 
Figure 2: Risk factors that can adversely affect mental wellbeing – EWCS8  and ESENER9 
 
A major difference between the ESENER and the EWCS survey is the respondent . In ESENER those 
persons who are most familiar with OSH or responsible for OSH in an enterprise were asked whether a 
certain risk factor exists in the enterprise; in the EWCS survey workers themselves were asked whether 
they are exposed to a risk factor.