Three nights a week for three consecutive months: this is the diagnostic threshold set by the WHO in ICD-11 beyond which a sleep disorder stops being tiredness and becomes a pathology. Yet in Italy, chronic insomnia remains largely underdiagnosed and undertreated: millions of people – estimates speak of 4-5 million – live with the disorder without ever having received adequate care.
On 10 April 2026, the Honorable Annarita Patriarca, secretary of the Office of the President of the Chamber of Deputies, filed bill C. 2872 with Montecitorio, entitled «Provisions for the prevention and treatment of chronic insomnia and for the protection of people affected by it». The deposit is recorded in the MP’s parliamentary activity sheet on camera.it, where the PDL is mentioned with a presentation date of 10 April 2026 and announcement in the Assembly on 13 April.
What does the bill provide?
The text, which Patriarca described as the result of a transversal and bipartisan consensus, moves along four lines:
The presentation of the text took place in parallel with an event at the Center for American Studies in Rome, promoted by the Parliamentary Intergroup for Neuroscience and Alzheimer’s, born in 2023 on the initiative of the Hon. Annarita Patriarca with the contribution of the pharmaceutical company Idorsia, in which a Policy Paper drawn up by the Scientific Committee of the Working Group on insomnia and other sleep disorders was illustrated.
The numbers of the phenomenon
The official prevalence stands at around 6% of the Italian adult population, although several experts estimate that the real share is between 10 and 15%, taking into account the hidden diagnostic burden. Seven out of ten patients are women, with peak incidences between the ages of 45 and 55 and in the over 65 range. The share of children and adolescents is also growing, largely linked to the prolonged use of smartphones and social media.
The economic burden is estimated at approximately 14 billion euros per year, equal to 0.74% of GDP. Indirect costs include absenteeism, reduced productivity – quantified at around 5,500 euros per capita – and accidents: according to data on Italian road accidents collected by ACI and ISTAT, around a quarter of night-time accidents are attributable to tiredness and lack of sleep, with a mortality rate proportionally higher than accidents caused by other reasons. At work, 7-10% of injuries have to do with excessive sleepiness.
The therapeutic question
One of the most discussed issues concerns treatments. Chronic insomnia, unlike temporary sleep difficulties, presents pathophysiological alterations of specific brain areas and requires targeted therapies: cognitive-behavioural therapy is considered the treatment of choice by international guidelines, but in Italy it is only available in a few ultra-specialised centres. The most modern drugs — those that act on the hypervigilance system, rather than simply sedating — are accessible only to a small proportion of eligible patients.
Part of the problem comes from the family doctor, who knows the patient’s overall clinical history but often does not have adequate training tools to recognize the disorder early. Strengthening that training is one of the recommendations of the Policy Paper presented on April 14.
The parliamentary path
The PDL is currently registered in the documents of the XIX Legislature with the number 2872, even if the bill sheet has not yet been published in the camera.it database – normal practice for documents filed a few days ago. It has not yet been assigned to a commission, nor is there a timetable. Whether the institutional recognition of chronic insomnia really takes the fast track promised by the title of the proposal will be confirmed by the work of the commissions.
