The facts
The numbers, and where each one comes from.
Every figure on this page carries the body that produced it and the year. If we couldn't stand a number up, we left it out — including some very striking ones.
Start here
First, the thing that works.
Public support cuts income poverty roughly in half where we work: from 14.6% of people to 7.4%, once social benefits are counted. That is the single most important number on this page, and it goes first on purpose.
It matters because the easy version of our argument — that the system is broken and nobody is helped — is false, and anyone who works inside that system knows it is false. What is true is narrower and harder: the system works, and it does not reach everyone, and the people it misses are predictable.
Alarmism is cheap. It also makes every accurate thing you say afterwards easier to dismiss.
Source: cantonal statistical office, Social Report: poverty statistics, published 18 December 2023, based on tax and benefit records. Figures for 2018.
The world
This is not a local problem with a local fix.
Source: World Health Organization, World Mental Health Today and Mental Health Atlas 2024, both published 2 September 2025.
Young people
The generation that is supposed to be fine.
These are the figures that made us build this rather than write about it.
What care costs
The gap between "covered" and "affordable".
Psychological therapy is reimbursed on medical prescription. That sentence is true, and it hides most of the problem.
Read that in order. With a high annual deductible, the first two and a half thousand francs of care are paid by the person needing it. For someone on an average income that is a bill they can plan for. For someone already at the edge, it is the reason the appointment is never made — and nothing about it shows up as a refusal, because the call never happens.
Meanwhile the system's own spending is rising: roughly 3.2 billion CHF through compulsory insurance for mental health care, up 6% in a year, about 7.5% of total health spending. (Obsan and the federal health office, 2024.)
Housing
You cannot treat someone who has nowhere to sleep.
These are estimates and we present them as estimates. The deeper point is the last box: what isn't counted can't be planned for. A person discharged from a ward with no address is not a statistical category anywhere, which is part of why it keeps happening.
Method
How to read anything on this page.
- Every figure names its source and its year If we can't name the body that produced a number, we don't publish it. On a mental health page an unverifiable figure is not a small mistake.
- Estimates are labelled as estimates The housing figures in particular are counts of people who came into contact with an institution. People who never do are missing from them, and always will be.
- We re-check everything Statistics here are reviewed every twelve months, crisis numbers every six. Figures on this page were verified in September 2026.
- We publish what cuts against us too The first section of this page is a fact about public services working. It would be easier to leave out. Leaving it out would make everything else weaker.