Discussions about mental health in the workplace have surged lately, driven by growing awareness of its impact on employee and organizational success. As occupational health researchers, these discussions have helped us shed light on the precursors and consequences of mental health challenges.

One such critical but often overlooked aspect is the relationship between mental health challenges and work injuries — a relationship that goes in both directions: struggling with mental health can increase the risk of work injuries, and work injuries can give rise to, or worsen, mental health challenges.

We aimed to shed light on this crucial bidirectional relationship because it undermines the sustainability of an organization’s most crucial asset: its people.

Mental health challenges and work injuries result in significant costs for organizations and society, and tremendous suffering among individuals and their families, workplaces and wider support systems.

While the costs for work injuries and mental health challenges vary widely, evidence indicates that experiencing both together can multiply medical expenses and time loss from two to 10 times.

Despite their impact, the critical relationship between work injuries and mental health challenges has only been examined sporadically across diverse disciplines, which rarely communicate with each other — until now.

Our comprehensive meta-analysis, involving a worldwide sample of more than 1.4........

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