Was Workplace Bullying Worse in the Past? Why Mental Illness Looks More Common Today

Japan now recognizes far more work-related mental-health compensation cases, yet recent bullying reports are down.

Published: November 14, 20264 min

How reading tools work

Listen reads the article aloud. Speed read shows phrases in sequence at your chosen pace. Language practice compares available translations. Save keeps a bookmark in this browser; find it in the player’s bookmarks. Play this article as Breakout turns its own words into bricks for you to knock out.

Share this article

Share on X (opens in a new tab)Share on Bluesky (opens in a new tab)

Japan now recognizes far more work-related mental-health compensation cases, yet recent bullying reports are down. The apparent contradiction comes from comparing different measurements.

The familiar story is that bosses once shouted, employees endured it, and modern workers have somehow become fragile despite better protections. It's an easy story to tell. Unfortunately, the numbers have not agreed to join the same storyline.

The increase is real—but what increased?

Japan recognized 100 work-related mental-disorder compensation cases in fiscal 2002 and 1,082 in fiscal 2025, approximately 10.8 times as many. The 2025 total of applications was 4,958.[1][2] These are actual administrative counts. They are not a direct census of people who developed mental illnesses. Knowledge of the system, willingness to file and recognition rules affect the result.

In a labor survey, the share reporting workplace power harassment during the preceding three years fell from 31.4% in fiscal 2020 to 19.3% in fiscal 2023.[3] That's a decrease, but nearly one in five respondents is hardly a reason to celebrate. Nor does it prove an exact historical comparison with the 1970s: there was no identical survey then.

The population figures move differently

A Japanese national measure of substantial psychological distress was 10.4% in 2010, 10.3% in 2019 and 9.9% in 2022.[4] That's nothing like a tenfold increase. Beware the widely repeated 9.4% figure: it was a policy target, not the observed 2022 result. Mixing up goals and observations makes a population healthier only on paper.

Japan recorded 34,427 suicides in 2003 and 19,188 in 2025, a decline of roughly 44%. Yet the number among elementary, junior-high and high-school students reached a record 538 in 2025.[5] Overall improvement can coexist with worsening risks for specific groups. Suicide totals also do not measure mental-illness incidence.

Better recognition, different pressures

Some people in earlier generations may have suffered without diagnosis, formal leave or a compensation claim. Greater visibility today may reflect changing opportunities to identify and document illness. At the same time, less yelling does not erase unreasonable workloads, tight deadlines, low job control, isolation or job insecurity. The World Health Organization identifies these as workplace mental-health risks.[6] How much each factor explains historical change, however, is still unclear.

The four measures have four jobs: compensation approvals count recognized occupational cases; harassment surveys count reported experiences; population surveys count psychological distress; suicide figures count deaths. They cannot be merged into a single score of generational toughness. If anything, forcing four unrelated spreadsheets to compete in a toughness contest is workplace bullying against statistics.