Around 40% of people who are paid invalidity benefits by the UWV benefits agency because they cannot work through ill health have psychiatric problems, according to research by national statistics office CBS.

The research, using figures from 2020, found that 365,000 men and 394,000 women were being paid invalidity benefit at the end of the year and that 42% of them had some sort of psychiatric complaint.

The number of women claiming benefits overtook men in 2015, and coincides with the rise in the number of working women, the CBS said. Women are more likely than men to be unable to work because of depression.

Second on the list of common reasons for claiming disability benefit is muscle and bone disease, and third, problems with the nervous system, eyes or ears.

The CBS statistics cover three categories of claims. People who have spend two years off work because they are ill and are then transferred to the disability benefit system account for two-thirds of claims. Almost one third of benefits are paid to youngsters with a disability, and the rest to the self-employed.