Six in Ten Trainees Report Mental Health Struggles as Switzerland's Apprenticeship Pipeline Buckles
Published on 09/13/2026 at 17:02 | Editorial boerse-global.de
A physiotherapist with four years on the job switched practices and suddenly felt she no longer knew where she stood. Her experience is not an outlier — it is the human face of a training system under strain.
Roughly 60% of apprentices in Switzerland report psychological problems during their training, according to a 2025 study by the FHNW university of applied sciences. The finding lands alongside another uncomfortable figure: 76% of the trainers responsible for supervising those apprentices say they simply do not have enough hours in the day to do the job properly.
The result is a pipeline that leaks. Nearly a quarter of trainees — 24% — see at least one apprenticeship contract terminated, and 62% of those terminations happen in the very first year, when newcomers are most dependent on guidance.
A silence that keeps problems hidden
What makes the numbers harder to fix is how few trainees are willing to speak up. Only 16% said they would approach their trainer about a mental health issue. The communication gap prompted Nadia Lamamra, a professor at EHB, and Nicole Cornu, an expert at the Swiss Trade Union Federation (SGB), to call for better qualification of training staff and more time allocated to vocational education.
Their demands point to a structural problem rather than an individual one: the people expected to spot warning signs of burnout are the same people reporting they have no capacity to do so.
The trouble starts before the first day of work
Long before a contract is signed, the groundwork for a healthy working life is laid — or undermined — in the classroom. Data from the DAK prevention radar for the 2025/2026 school year paint a troubling picture of that foundation.
About 49% of surveyed pupils reported sleep disturbances, up sharply from 36% in 2019/2020. A total of 69% said they feel exhausted at least once a week, compared with 52% three years earlier. Nearly half — 49% — described their overall wellbeing as reduced, and only 57% said they look to the future with optimism.
DAK chief Andreas Storm linked these health deficits to the weak results of the 2025 Pisa study, in which around 6,700 young people took part.
Stress does not stop at the apprenticeship
Pressure on workers extends well beyond those just starting out. A report by Techniker Krankenkasse found that two-thirds of people in Germany feel stressed frequently or occasionally, with single parents carrying a disproportionate share of the load.
A survey of 1,005 parents by KKH Kaufmännische Krankenkasse found that 61% of single parents feel severely psychologically burdened, against 31% of parents in couples. Close to two-thirds of single parents — around 90% of whom are mothers — reported being frequently stressed.
Gender-specific health factors play a role too. A 2023 study by the Berlin School of Economics and Law put the annual cost to German companies of reduced productivity linked to menopause symptoms at 9.4 billion euros. One in four affected women cuts her working hours to part-time, just under 20% change jobs, and 10% opt for earlier retirement.
Recovery as a skill, not an afterthought
Against this accumulation of strain, experts point to evening routines as one lever for regulating cortisol, the stress hormone. Because cortisol bottoms out between 10 p.m. and midnight, limiting light exposure in the hours before bed matters more than many people realise.
Research published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism found that a single hour of artificial light in the evening can suppress melatonin by as much as 50%. Specialists recommend dimming lights to below 2700 Kelvin from 9 p.m. and keeping rooms at 18 to 20 degrees Celsius.
A 20-minute wind-down before sleep — using techniques such as physiological sighing or deliberately "offloading" thoughts — can ease the transition into sleep and, in turn, shore up the mental resilience needed to cope with working life.
