The Departments of Addiction and Mental Health will be reorganized: i Mental health centers will have new functions. Deputy Governor with responsibility for Health Riccardo Riccardi explained, with regard to the catchment area of the Mental Health Centers (CSM), that “the goal is to find the right balance between accessibility in terms of proximity to the population and efficiency of the services provided in relation to the basin itself“, in order to ensure assistance in a territorial area to at least 50 thousand inhabitants (subject to exceptions for mountain areas and those with low population density).
New organization
As pointed out by the representative of the regional executive, it should still be pointed out that “is the responsibility of the Health Authorities structuring of mental health centers on the basis of the identified need“. In this context, for the Asufc area, as well as in the other companies, the number of complex operating structures (Socs) for the CSM was indicated, still allowing the company the maintenance of all the existing structures within an organization hierarchically referred to the number of Soc. Finally, with regard to the functions institutionally guaranteed by the Department of addictions and mental health, these are the services and activities provided in relation to demand: home, outpatient, semi-residential, residential and hospital care. In particular, the CSM (corporate structure of first reference for the person with mental disorders) guarantees the functions: outpatient, semi-residential and residential.
The worry
The prospect of a new organization, however, has moved much concern right inside the environments of the CSM, where the regional associations representing people with mental health problems have raised various perplexities with respect to the Regional Council Resolution no.1446 / 2021, which discloses the guidelines for the new organizational model of the Service Regional Healthcare and the definition of Company Acts.
To speak to the contact person Daniela Careddu, of the Regional Coordination of Mental Health Associations. “We want to express the grave concern about the lack of participation and sharing to decisions that deeply affect the lives of tens of thousands of people. We observe that, as far as we know, they have not been shared not even with the Directors or operators of the Departments of mental health. All this gives us well-founded reasons to believe that, if applied in the Company Deeds, the deliberate indications will lead to serious deterioration the quality of the Health Service as a whole, with particular regard to local mental health services, which for years have already been penalized and unsuitable for responding to growing needs“.
The issues
Careddu continues by explaining what, for the Coordination, they will be the main problems that will be created. “Incoherent with some general assumptions, the organizational choices all go in the direction of weakening and disqualifying them.“. The Mental Health Centers, the hub of local services, will decrease in number, “and we do not think reassuring the clarification, reported by the press on October 14, by vice president Riccardi according to which the reduction will concern primary staff, not structures“For Careddu.”the complexity of a CSM is known, so it is legitimate to fear that if they do not have solid and continuous direction they will not be able to operate at their best“. This choice, for the Coordination,”seems to confirm the lack of attention to the appearance of the enhancement of the personnel, to the qualitative / quantitative endowments of the CSM“.
A further criticism concerns the fact that it was “completely disregarded the request that, albeit progressively, all CSMs will have to operate on 24 hours, 7 days a week, as appropriate and necessary“. Furthermore, in the resolution, it seems that it is not explicit that the CSM must undertake home care,”indispensable when it comes to dealing with mental disorder with logic true proximity“On the contrary, Careddu comments, the number of beds in hub hospitals is increasing,”therefore with institutionalizing logic and increasingly far from home“.
Absence of prevention
Careddu also complains that there is no “no mention of any programs mental health prevention, sensational absence in an era in which the pandemic has dramatically increased the needs for individual and collective care and attention, objectively detectable by the extraordinary, worrying increase in the consumption of psychotropic drugs“.
The appeal
Mental health affects everyone and we believe there can be no health without mental health. We also appeal here to those involved in mental health issues for job responsibilities, roles, functions, and to all citizens, because they pay great attention to a document that will determine the type of answers given to citizens’ needs. The alternative involves the entire health system and is between two opposite directions: prevention, proximity, inclusion on the one hand, medicalization, distance from people’s life contexts on the other.
For this reason, we hope, together with all the interested parties, to be able to urgently reach a discussion with the President Fedriga and the Vice President Riccardi, so that the choices of the Company Deeds are suspended until the requests of those who will live there have been taken into consideration. the consequences on your skin. All this in compliance with the inalienable principles of transparency and participation that characterize our democracy.
Daniela Careddu
(Regional Coordination of Associations for Mental Health)
.