2024-10-29 08:00:00
The subject of budget cuts imposed on local authorities is becoming more and more pressing. For several years, these funding reductions have weighed heavily on the shoulders of mayors, forced to juggle increasingly limited resources while continuing to meet the needs of their citizens.
It’s no longer just a question of budget management; it is a real test of mental resistance for these local elected officials. Indeed, when they talk about the challenges of their mission, the mayors emphasize how budgetary management has transformed into one of the main stress factors in their daily lives.
As communities see their resources reduced, mayors are forced to justify every expense in a climate of growing distrust of public finances. This constant pressure, combined with increasingly burdensome complexity and administrative burden, is transformed into an “iron cage” which stifles their commitment and limits their effectiveness.
60 hour weeks
Added to this budgetary constraint are work weeks which frequently exceed 60 hours, accentuating latent exhaustion which ends up taking hold insidiously. Rigid procedures and funding delays linked to subsidies ultimately discourage municipal initiatives, further weakening the morale of elected officials.
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If budget cuts constitute a major burden, they are unfortunately not the only stress factor. Acts of attacks against mayors, both physical and verbal, have multiplied. Here a madman wanted to burn down the town hall, there a mayor was the subject of a knife attack.
Unfortunately, these physical attacks are increasing, to which are added other forms of less visible but more frequent attacks, such as verbal attacks, insults or various intimidations… These events leave mayors prey to immense moments of distress, where discouragement is added to legitimate doubts about continuing their mission. There have never been so many resignations of mayors.
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However, these painful and serious facts alone cannot sum up the vast question of the mental health of mayors. It would even be counterproductive to reduce the pathogen to nothing more than pathos. Worse, it would be reductive to limit mental health to the pathogenic dimension alone, without taking into account the events that generate good health, which we call “salutogenic”.
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