Italy puts a stop to "burn-out" with a citizens' bill to protect employees' mental health

Nearly a million deaths a year. Not from workplace accidents, from sudden tragedies. But because of stress, job insecurity and impossible working hours.

We call them "mental risks". We call it a "big week" and we keep going: it's a form of fatigue that doesn't show up when you sign in. It doesn't leave marks on the body, it doesn't count as overtime. It accumulates slowly, between an e-mail sent at 11 p.m. and the phone that also vibrates on Sundays, between short contracts and objectives that change every month. It's the kind that stays with you when you get home and can't quite switch off.

In recent years, this pressure has been reflected in figures. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that over 840,000 people die every year as a result of mental risks at work, such as chronic stress, excessive working hours and job insecurity. This figure takes the issue out of the private sphere and into the heart of public health, where it now carries as much weight as other, more visible factors.

According to the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA), almost 45% of European workers report risk factors for their mental health. Stress, anxiety and depression represent the second most common work-related health problem on the continent.

Work generates pressure, pressure becomes a symptom, and the symptom is referred to the individual as a personal problem. Trouble sleeping? Learn to manage your stress. Do you feel sick to your stomach before opening your mailbox? Work on your resilience. Feeling drained after months of job insecurity, constant on-call duty and unattainable targets? Learn to organize yourself better. It's a convenient strategy, because it leaves intact the mechanism that consumes and places the burden of repair on those who are already worn out.

The invisible cost that the system doesn't account for

In Italy, the phenomenon is emerging slowly, but the data are beginning to keep pace. In 2024, there were over 272,000 new users of mental health services, with more than 10 million services delivered across the country. These figures testify to a system that's already under pressure, even before we really get to the crux of the problem: work. The problem is that this suffering appears late on the public radar. By the time it reaches health services, it has already become structural: persistent anxiety, depression, burn-out. Everything that comes before, the wear and tear of everyday life, remains outside the most visible statistics.

And yet, this is where it all really counts. The pace of contemporary work has changed: fewer boundaries between free time and working hours, constant and increased exposure, more precariousness. The result? Continuous tension that never really goes away. In 2025, INAIL (or Assurance Maladie - Risques Professionnels in France) updated its work-related stress assessment tools, incorporating factors such as telecommuting and the impact of new technologies. A clear signal: the problem exists, it's growing, and it needs to be better measured.

A concrete proposal: the national psychological network

This is the background to the "Diritto a Stare Bene" ("Right to feel good") proposal, which reached Parliament with over 70,000 signatures. The idea is to build a public psychological network, accessible and present everywhere, capable of spotting distress before it turns into a health emergency. It's not just a question of increasing the supply of services, but of changing the point of entry: bringing psychological support closer to everyday life, and in particular, in the workplace.

The Conseil national de l'Ordre des psychologues (CNOP) points out that the figure of "primary care psychologist" already exists or is planned in several regions, but that a stable national structure is still lacking. This absence creates an uneven geography: some areas are beginning to provide responses, while others remain deprived.

The issue is further complicated by the increasing integration of technology into work processes. Telecommuting, constant availability and digital platforms are all useful tools, but they stretch working time to the point of indistinction.

The boundary between presence and absence is becoming increasingly blurred. And when it disappears, recovery becomes more difficult. European studies show that intensive use of technology, especially without clear rules, is associated with greater mental fatigue and concentration difficulties. Work bursts into the domestic sphere and settles in.

A collective problem, not an individual one

For years, work-related psychological ill-being was treated as a private matter: personal resilience, stress management, individual capacity to adapt. Today, this approach no longer holds water. The figures reveal a structural, widespread phenomenon with significant social and economic consequences. A national psychological network would have this function: to shift the focus from the individual to the system. Intervening upstream, alleviating the burden on health services, reducing the long-term impact.

A national psychological network would also serve to break down the phenomenon at hand: calling "corporate well-being" what often only comes about after years of toxic workloads, compressed schedules, fear of losing one's job and permanent on-call duty. Psychological support becomes serious when it is no longer seen as a small, benevolent band-aid on a fabric that is constantly being torn apart. Because work, for its part, continues to be measured in terms of productivity, absent days, performance and sales. And meanwhile, somewhere, someone is lying awake at three in the morning, their phone on the bedside table and their mind still at the office.