Burnout and depression: long-term illnesses increase by 32%

The amount of people taking sick leave lasting more than a year due to a mental health condition continued to rise in 2025, according to the latest data from the National Institute for Health and Disability Insurance (Inami).

The rise in cases linked specifically to depression or burnout is particularly striking, with a record increase of 32% over four years.

Of the more than 576,000 Belgians who have been unable to work for more than a year, 155,000 were on sick leave due to depression or burnout in 2025, representing an increase of 5.2% compared with 2024.

“The causes are multifactorial, but when someone is on sick leave due to burnout or depression, accessing care is not always easy or appropriate,” Aline Durant, an occupational psychologist, told RTBF.

“This leads to long-term, or even very long-term, periods of sick leave, during which recovery is difficult. This is because there’s a sense of isolation, and it’s not a condition where the treatment pathways are as clear-cut as they are for certain other illnesses.

"These figures are mounting up, and people remain on sick leave. As a result, new cases are driving up the figures."

Burnout has been called the "disease of the century" by mental health specialists.

“It’s a phenomenon of saturation arising from demands - particularly those relating to professional performance - but which we can also impose on ourselves individually,” Durant said.

“Changes in working conditions across the entire professional sphere are one of the factors contributing to burnout. There’s a trend towards increased intensity.

"In a societal context, we’re of course talking about digitalisation, remote working and our smartphones, which have radically altered our relationship with time, our relationships with others, and so on."

Durant also warns of a third factor: performance pressure in the private sphere.

“Our lives are much busier than they used to be. This adds yet another layer of pressure,” Durant said.

“Burnout results from the interplay between these three aspects: the individual, the workplace and society. At some point, one of these pillars will begin to weaken.

"This weakening not only leads to the weakening of the other pillars, but it also destabilises the individual, which can lead to a form of exhaustion, burnout or a mental breakdown."

The Inami report noted that the majority of people recognised as unfit for work following depression or burnout in 2025 were in the oldest age group for workers: 53.2% are aged 50 or older.

Durant believes that working conditions have become too demanding, too stressful and too connected.

“Clearly, for older people, this has also coincided with having to adapt to a huge number of new tools,” she said.

“In the past, when you started a job, you changed very little within that profession, other than gaining experience. Today, there’s much greater mobility from one job to another and the profession itself changes enormously over the course of a lifetime.

"For older people, the ability to adapt is diminishing. This is particularly true when it comes to all aspects of IT and digitalisation."

Durant warned that this is likely to become even more pronounced with the increase in use of artificial intelligence, which is also a potential source of anxiety: “These new tools can be difficult to grasp, especially as one gets older.”

Compounding the problem is the rising of the retirement age and the fact that it is difficult to find a job for workers over 60, meaning some portion of those older workers on long-term sick leave are simply waiting until retirement with no intention or realistic means of returning to the workforce.

The self-employed are also particularly affected: between 2021 and 2025, the number of self-employed people on sick leave due to depression or burnout increased by 65%.

“This figure has probably risen due to working conditions and the economic climate. Today, it’s more difficult than it was a few years ago to run a small business or be self-employed,” Durant explained.

“This is because economic conditions have become increasingly precarious. We see this particularly in the hospitality sector, for example. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to run your own business.

"There’s also been work to reduce the stigma and promote prevention amongst the self-employed: they’re now more willing to accept that they can take sick leave due to incapacity before they completely break down, and so avoid losing their business and their standard of living."

Inami’s figures indicate that cases of incapacity for work lasting more than a year resulting from depression or burnout cost the sickness benefit scheme more than €2.5 billion in 2024, a 12% increase in one year, and a 78% rise since 2019.

The current federal government wants to get more people on long-term sick leave back to work, notably through stricter monitoring and faster reintegration.

This policy has been criticised by the Observatory on Chronic Diseases, which believes it places too much emphasis on sanctions and not enough on prevention and the conditions for returning to work.