Mental health

The invisible cost of work that wears you down: a national psychological network is needed

In the Senate the popular initiative bill 'Diritto a Stare Bene' with over 70,000 signatures, which proposes the establishment of an integrated network in the NHS that also acts within the workplace

by Francesco Maesano*

30 April 2026

Young woman in a mental therapy session talking with a psychologist in the office. Pormezz - stock.adobe.com

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

We know it exists, but we cannot quantify how much it costs us: it is the work that wears us down, almost invisible to detection due to a structural paradox in the data collection system.

In Italia, INAIL only records recognised occupational diseases and work-related stress is not a tabulated pathology: it is up to the worker to prove the causal link and the recognition rate stops at 13 per cent, compared to 40 per cent for other occupational diseases.

Meanwhile, INPS and the Ministry of Labour register voluntary resignations but do not encode the psychological motivation in the telematics form. Three public archives, no bridge between them.

This is while ISTAT measures the prevalence of anxiety and depression and tells us that those who suffer from them lose an average of 18 days of work per year compared to 5 for those who are well.

The result is an information infrastructure that does not speak for itself. And if the path that leads a person from feeling unwell at work to leaving the market is not reconstructed by any public institution, the only available photograph ends up being that of private consultancy firms: BVA Doxa notes that 49 per cent of those under 34 have resigned at least once to preserve their psychological health, UnoBravo tells us that eight out of ten Italians have thought about leaving their job because of stress, the Censis Eudaimon report adds that half of the companies have seen voluntary resignations increase by 2024.

Then there are the intermediate bodies such as CISL Lombardia, which places work stress as the first reason for leaving, ahead of the company climate and pay. Serious but fragmented data.

This sounds technical. It is not. When a country does not measure the cost of psychological wear and tear at work, it cannot even decide how to prevent it and ends up misallocating public resources dedicated to the work itself.

Active policies, employment incentives, unemployment benefits, shock absorbers, training: everything is calibrated on an idea of a worker who is never sick in the mind. The resources arrive downstream, when the person has already left the market, when the damage has already been unloaded on the health system, on NASpI, on families. Never upstream, where they would cost less and yield more.

With Pubblica, the civic force that brought the popular initiative bill 'Diritto a Stare Bene' to the Senate with over 70 thousand signatures, we ask to reverse the perspective. We propose the establishment of a National Psychological Network integrated into the NHS, universal and permanent, which also acts within the workplace: accessible territorial garrisons, prevention paths, structured support for those at risk of being expelled from their jobs by their own malaise. Not a bonus, not a voucher, not an individual response. An investment infrastructure on the country's human capital that produces services in community contexts but also data, through experimentation and the implementation on the territory of a true culture of impact when we speak of public investment.

The numbers, those collected, are unequivocal. The Order of Psychologists' PsyCARE report showed that the 2022 psychologist bonus, with 25 million invested, generated 312 million in savings in avoided sick days: twelve euros returned for every euro spent.

OECD estimates put the Italian productivity loss linked to untreated psychological distress, including absences, resignations and long-term unemployment, at over 63 billion a year. For every euro not invested in psychological support, the public system spends between four and five euros on crisis, emergency and assistance services.

Italia has no oil, no gas, no rare earths. It has people's minds, and today it is neglecting to exploit it, when it is the only real natural resource available to relaunch growth. Measuring how much this lack of investment costs us would be the first necessary political act. To invest so that it stops costing us, the next.

*Public Coordinator 'Right to Be Well' campaign