The following bibliographic review work is descriptive, it aims to establish what are the main psychological causes of absenteeism in the last ten years. The definitions of absenteeism or absenteeism proposed by Douglas, Fichman, Chiavenato and Barmberger & Biron are taken as reference. For the collection of information, databases with Open Access policies were used. The inclusion criteria were articles related to psychological or medical approaches that inquired about the causes of absenteeism or absenteeism. Studies focused on establishing the costs of absenteeism and when absenteeism is grounds for dismissal were excluded. The review concludes that lack of motivation and stress are the main causes of absenteeism from work. In the same way, the study shows that in Colombia studies on absenteeism have a predominance to establish what are the medical causes that cause it. In the department of Huila, on the other hand, there are no recent studies on the psychological causes of absenteeism.