Beyond stigma: mental health between care and organizational responsibility
Among young people under 35–40, distress is increasing: in recent years there has been a rise in access to services of up to +30–40%, with higher levels of anxiety, depression, and emotional exhaustion. In the over-40 age group, the data appear more stable, but this is not necessarily reassuring. Distress is often less openly expressed, more silent, and tends to emerge later, when it is already structured.
The gender dimension is also relevant. Women more frequently report symptoms of anxiety and depression and make greater use of services, while men are less visible in the data and tend to seek support later. Yet, while the demand for support is growing, another less visible phenomenon is also growing: we continue to treat more and more, but we do not always succeed in reducing the conditions that make this necessary.
We are trying to treat what we continue to produce. It is important to clarify one point. Mood disorders and psychological distress have multifactorial origins: individual, relational, family, and social factors are intertwined in complex ways. At the same time, however, work represents one of the environments in which people spend much of their time and invest a significant part of their identity. For this reason, it cannot be considered a separate compartment of life.
The work context can either amplify conditions of stress and distress, or it can become a space that contains them, acknowledges them, and makes them sustainable. Work is not neutral with respect to mental health. It is one of the places where it is either built or undermined.
It does not work to think that simply placing a psychologist in the company is enough if the context remains unchanged. Creating conditions of hyper-connection, expecting responses at 11 p.m., not working on workplace climate and the possibility of open dialogue, and then offering a space for care risks being ineffective. In many companies, what is done for wellbeing and mental health translates into agreements with professionals, online platforms, or initiatives such as mindfulness sessions. This is certainly a step forward and can be helpful. But it is not sufficient. If organizational behaviours are not addressed, the risk is that action is taken only downstream of the problem. Unsustainable workloads, implicit expectations of constant availability, and the quality of relationships are factors that not only generate but often sustain a widespread state of anxiety. In this sense, the issue is not only to offer support tools, but to question what within the organization contributes to making their use necessary.
The first step is not care. It is culture. Promoting a stigma-free culture of mental health does not simply mean talking about it more or making services available. It means intervening in the daily conditions in which people work: sustainable workloads, clarity in roles and organization, the possibility of disconnecting, and real spaces for discussion where people can express ideas and needs without fear of being misunderstood or manipulated. It also means recognizing that emotions are part of how work functions. When the context does not change, something precise happens: people stop questioning the system and develop a sense of helplessness, leading to progressive disengagement, up to the point where they begin to question themselves.
In this scenario, talking about stigma-free mental health means avoiding turning it into a new implicit evaluation criterion. There is no single correct or continuous way to be well. There is the possibility of going through different moments without this being interpreted as a sign of lesser professional value. This is even more evident in younger generations, who bring a more explicit demand for self-expression and work–life balance. This is not fragility; it is a demand for sustainability.
Truly promoting mental health therefore requires a shift in perspective: from individual responsibility to organizational responsibility. It is not only about adding tools, but about intervening in what happens every day in work contexts. This means working on clarity of roles and responsibilities, creating real spaces for discussion, training managers in people management, and making limits legitimate: the right not to be constantly available, not to carry everything, and to be able to ask for support. Alongside this, support tools remain important, but they are truly effective only when they are embedded in a context that does not constantly generate the conditions that make them necessary.
In this direction, we have chosen to complement the development of a sustainable organizational culture with concrete initiatives: supplementary health insurance, pediatric support for parents, and support pathways for returning from maternity leave with the involvement of mental health professionals. We have structured onboarding programmes involving the People team during the first months to support entry into the company, with particular attention to younger generations. We also invest in coaching programmes, especially for people managers, to support more conscious management of differences and individualities. At the same time, we focus on listening: through exit interviews to understand the factors that led people to leave the company, and periodic surveys on organizational wellbeing.
Finally, we are expanding training programmes to include practical topics such as financial education, because wellbeing is not only about work but about the overall balance of life. We cannot solve all complexities, but we can create more sustainable conditions and enable people to experience their professional lives with greater peace of mind. Because wellbeing is not declared. It is built, every day, in the contexts where people work and live.