THE HIDDEN PANDEMIC
AFFECTING YOUR BALANCE SHEET
Last updated: 13th May 2026
By Tim Elwin
There is a cost inside your company that will never show up in a report. It will not appear in budget forecasts. It will not be raised in a strategy meeting. You will not see it on an HR dashboard. But it is there. And it is growing.
This is not a minor or invisible problem. It is a hidden pandemic draining Australian businesses an estimated $90 million every single day in lost productivity, absenteeism and turnover. It is a crisis you cannot see on the floor, yet it is already shaping the way your people show up to work.
The signs are easy to miss. The team member whose performance quietly fades. The one who has become quieter in meetings. The one working from home more and more, stepping into empty rooms for phone calls, no longer fully present. The one quit with a not so valid reason.
You are not seeing laziness or disengagement. You are seeing survival.
It starts at home
We are watching the worst teenage mental health crisis tear through families at a scale Australia has never seen. Eating disorders, self-harm, OCD, substance use, depression, suicide attempts and for too many, sadly succeeding.
These crises are not happening inside your office walls. They are happening in the homes of the people who keep your business running. Your staff are holding their families together while trying to hold their careers together and your business together. They arrive, they try, but they are split down the middle, half in the room and half in a crisis.
The pattern is predictable
It starts with a few signs that something is wrong. A shift in a teenager’s behaviour. Then it escalates. The family scrambles to understand and to get help. Appointments, diagnoses, new routines. Bills piling up. Sleepless nights. Fear setting in.
At some point, one parent often leaves the workforce to manage the crisis. The other parent, possibly your employee, stays because they have to keep the income coming. Medical costs eat through the household budget. Energy is spent on survival, not performance.
That quiet resignation letter you saw last month may have been the result of this. And if one parent has left the workforce, there is a good chance the other is still employed somewhere, possibly in your business, trying to hold the line.
The cost of doing nothing
Ignore it and you will pay in turnover, burnout, absenteeism, presenteeism and the quiet erosion of team culture. You will lose knowledge, leadership potential and stability. You will lose the very people you rely on most when they are forced to choose between their child and their job.
I know what many executives think. It is not our problem. We are not a charity. But looking after your staff is not charity, it is smart business. Supporting parents in crisis reduces turnover, protects productivity and strengthens loyalty. Think prevention and support instead of crisis management.
Looking after your people means more than a slogan on a careers page. It means giving them flexibility that is real, not just a line in a policy. It means leave arrangements that reflect the reality of caring for a child in crisis. It means training leaders to recognise the signs and respond with understanding instead of penalties. It means creating a workplace where staff can speak up without fear of stigma or career damage.
Sometimes big business needs to think like a family business. When you look after your people, you protect your bottom line and your future workforce. Driving profits at the expense of the people who hold your business together will eventually cost you far more. And it’s simply bad business.
What matters now
I am telling you what I have seen firsthand. What I have lived firsthand. Families in their hardest moments. Teenagers who want to disappear. Parents weighing up which one will quit work to become the full-time carer. Parents terrified for anyone to know, even when their child is in hospital.
This is your workforce. These are the people holding your business together. They are not statistics. Even if you try to replace them, there is a good chance the person you hire will be carrying the same burden. They are sitting at your desks and logging into your meetings right now, hoping no one notices what they are carrying.
This is already inside your business. The only question is whether you will lead through it and support them, or turn away and leave them to carry it alone.
You do not see what they are carrying
They are taking calls from the school about lack of engagement or risky behaviour. Managing weekly GP visits, fortnightly psychologist sessions, monthly psychiatrist appointments. Sitting through hospital admissions and emergency interventions.
They do all of this in silence because they fear the label, the judgement and the perception of being unreliable. So they show up to meetings. They answer emails. They pretend. But they are not fine. You cannot expect someone to perform at full capacity when they spent last night in an emergency ward or sleeping beside their child’s hospital bed.
This is sadly not rare
According to the ABS, approximately half of the Australian workforce are parents and around half of those have a teenager at home. Now put that beside the fact that around half of Australian teenagers are living with significant mental distress. That means roughly one in four people working in your business are dealing with the emotional and practical weight of raising a teenager, let alone one who is struggling with mental health issues.
Poor mental health already costs Australian businesses $936 million every single day 1. When you focus on just the parents dealing with teenage mental health emergencies, the numbers are staggering. This single hidden issue is draining an estimated $90 million every day from Australian businesses. That's up to $33 billion a year in lost productivity, absenteeism and turnover.
This is not a fringe problem. It is already inside your business, quietly reshaping how your people show up, perform and stay.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are eating disorders framed as an addiction to pain? An eating disorder is rarely about the food. It is a tool used for emotional regulation. For a teenager in turmoil, the ritual of restriction or binging provides a hard sense of control that silences the internal chaos. Once the brain links this physical control with emotional relief, it becomes a learned, addictive pattern used to survive the day.
Is an eating disorder just a sign of teenage defiance? No. While it looks like a choice to skip meals or follow rigid rules, it is actually a survival strategy. It is a physical response to a belief that they are failing or broken. You are not seeing a disengaged teen; you are seeing a kid using restriction to manage an emotional war happening inside.
What specific warning signs should parents look for? Parents need to look for shifts in behaviour before they see shifts in weight. Key signs include new, rigid rituals around food, wearing oversized clothes to hide a shrinking body, and "skipping" meals while claiming to be tired or busy. Once a young brain is under-fueled, their thinking narrows, making bad choices look like safe ones to them.
How do eating disorders impact the Australian workforce and economy? With 1.1 million Australians living with an eating disorder, roughly 4 million family members are left fighting the fallout. This is a crisis that drains $90 million from Australian businesses every single day in lost productivity and turnover. Parents are forced to manage emergency admissions and constant vigilance while trying to keep their careers and businesses together.
Can you force a teenager to recover? Trying to force help often backfires and further locks in the pattern of control. Recovery is not a tidy clinical win because change must be chosen by the individual. Real transformation starts when the focus shifts to creating a safer way for the young person to be heard, helping them manage emotions without using pain as a tool for destruction.
About the Author
Tim Elwin is an award-winning documentary producer and the founder of Urban Ripples. As a father who has lived through the youth mental health crisis firsthand, his work, including the upcoming documentary Chasing Silence, combines lived experience with clinical research to spark conversations that lead to real change.
Chasing Silence is a raw, unfiltered documentary asking every parent: if your child was suffering, would you recognise the signs?. Built on lived experience and clinical research, this film reveals the tools that can help before it is too late.
Source: ¹ HRM Online, Poor mental health is costing employers over $900 million per day, hrmonline.com.au