“Dramatic shortage of personnel” – breaking latest news

The Basaglia law remains revolutionary but today the country has changed and needs a new organization of mental health services. And above all it needs resources, today under 3% of the health fund, and investments in human capital because the shortage of personnel is dramatic and risks bringing down the entire public system. the alarm that comes from the Italian Society of Psychiatry on the eve of the forty-fifth anniversary of Law 180 which, in 1978, led to the closure of asylums. Social changes, new mental pathologies, the consequences of the pandemic, the lack of personnel, the overload of the Rems and, as highlighted by the murder of Barbara Capovani, a psychiatrist in Pisa, the growing problem of operator safety: all of this requires updates, explains the president of Sip, Emi Bondi.

To commemorate the Basaglia law, a special preview is scheduled on Saturday 13 November on the Youtube channel of the PsychiatryOnline Italia magazine of “Caff e Psichiatria”. Guest the president SIP Emi Bondi. The interview program will then be broadcast from 15 May, Monday to Thursday at 8.30am throughout the year.

Today – underlines Emi Bondi – the number of users who turn to public services has changed. Only 20-25% have psychotic and bipolar disordersi

depressive or anxious, while personality disorders, drug use and neurodevelopmental disorders such as ADHD and autism have increased. At the same time, the enormous increase in referrals of offenders to Psychiatric Services is shifting the unsolved problems of prisons to the Rems and other structures of the Department of Mental Health.

Safety

huge too operator safety issue. Both within the structures, both in the phases of management of patients in acute crises within the emergency room, and in all the structures on which the offenders with serious mental disorders converge – explains the president Bondi – who see today in the REMS is the only regulatory reference, which has already been largely saturated for years in the absence of a prison adaptation policy for subjects, albeit with mental disorders, who must and can stay with functional and diversified internal services for clinical and control needs social.

Investments

For that, you need ingenti investments in mental health, to fill the staff shortage at all levels. a stable adjustment of funds in an amount not less than 8-9% of the health fund is fundamental, as in other European countries. Today we are below 3%. Otherwise it will be impossible to guarantee the service to patients but also the safety of operators both inside the structures and in the emergency room.