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Image by Mihajlo Ckovric / Stocksy July 14, 2026 Most people who are struggling at work don't look like they're struggling. They show up, meet deadlines, and answer emails. But a large-scale longitudinal study1 tracking over 18,700 working adults found that even moderate psychological distress, the kind that doesn't have a name or a diagnosis, affects how people perform at work. The impact isn't sudden. It shows up as tasks taking longer than they should, focus that's harder to sustain, and effort that feels disproportionate to the work in front of you.
About the study
Researchers used data from eight rounds of the Australian survey collected between 2007 and 2021, covering 70,973 observations from 18,729 working adults.
They measured psychological distress using the Kessler 10 scale, a questionnaire that asks how often people felt nervous, hopeless, exhausted, or restless over the past month. Participants were grouped into low, moderate, or high distress based on their scores.
The researchers then tracked three workplace outcomes:
Moderate distress, measurable productivity loss
You might assume that psychological distress only starts affecting your work when things get really bad.
The data tells a different story.
Workers with moderate distress (not high, just moderate) were already missing more work due to sick days and more likely to show up to work while unwell compared to their low-distress peers.
Workers with high distress showed even steeper numbers across both measures.
The financial toll adds up fast. Workers with high psychological distress incurred an estimated AUD 3,656 more per year in presenteeism-related costs compared to those with low distress, and that's just from showing up while struggling.
Why presenteeism is the part we miss most
Of the three measures, presenteeism is the sneakiest. It doesn't show up in absence records or trigger a conversation with a manager. But can eroding focus, decision-making, and work quality in ways that are easy to attribute to something else.
Many people with moderate psychological distress don't think of themselves as struggling. They're functioning. They're showing up. But functioning and thriving aren't the same thing, and this research makes that gap a lot harder to ignore.
The subtle signs psychological distress is affecting your work
Psychological distress doesn't always look like a crisis. More often, it shows up in small, easy-to-dismiss ways:
None of these are character flaws. They're signals worth paying attention to before they grow.
Small habits that support your mental health at work
Small, consistent habits can make a real difference, both for how you feel and how you show up at work.
The takeaway
Psychological distress doesn't have to reach crisis level to affect your work. This 14-year study found that even moderate mental strain can increase sick days and even reduce output on the days you do show up. Presenteeism, the habit of showing up while unwell, is where much of that loss happens.
Tending to your mental health early, through movement, sleep, boundaries, and support, is one of the most direct investments you can make in how you perform and how you feel.
