We receive requests for help every day. Adolescents in identity crisis; elderly people in depression and we don’t have the means to respond except by listening and referring them to Mental Health centers.
This is the state of our newsroom.
Reality, outside?
Just study an Aopi survey (https://www.aopi.it/) only one pediatric patient out of five manages to be hospitalized in a neuropsychiatry ward and four out of five are housed in inappropriate wards, one of which even in psychiatry for adults. (L’Espresso).
The appeal of the medical directors of mental health centers?
“There is a need for concrete and immediate initiatives to mend the public network of DSMs – reads the appeal – which is increasingly frayed, even with a relaunch of psychological-psychotherapeutic pathways within them, to achieve community mental health, able to give integrated answers to the various biological, psychological and social aspects”. In a nutshell – according to the directors of the mental health departments – it is a question of implementing, starting from 2023, an extraordinary recruitment plan, binding defined resources, and of allocating, over a maximum of three years, over 2 billion “to in order to reach the minimum objective of 5% of the health fund for mental health, as per the commitment of the presidents of the Regions in 2001, also referred to by the recent sentence of the Constitutional Court n. 22 of 2022″.
“We are facing a situation of impoverishment of the resources of public services for mental health, which falls within the context of a more general impoverishment of health care – urges Massimo Cozza, director of the Dsm Asl Roma 2 -. We too have been affected by the blockage of turnover, which has affected the Local Health Authorities, with the aggravating circumstance that in our field personnel represent the main resource for achieving community-type mental health, where the human relationship between professionals and people with mental disorders represents the fundamental axis of taking charge”. A situation further worsened with the pandemic and the worsening of the economic and social situation which – between eating disorders, self-harm behavior and addictions – has led to an increase in disorders among adolescents by around 30%. “With the increase in requests for help, our difficulties in being able to provide an answer have also increased – continues Cozza -. When it comes to mental health, the DSMs represent the backbone, they are the places where people with the most serious disorders are taken care of. So the ones who pay the price are always the same, those who have fewer economic, relationship and cultural resources”.
Suicides or suicidal behavior among teenagers?
Requests for help have grown by 55% compared to 2020 and have almost quadrupled since 2019, before the pandemic. Of particular concern is the data relating to ai young: 28% of requests for help, received on the telephone line or in the WhatsApp chat of Telefono Amico Italia, are from under 26. In the first half of 2022 there were more than 2,700 appeals and 28% were young people up to 25 years of age. The data of the voluntary organization, released on the occasion of the International Day for Suicide Prevention, bring to light an often overlooked phenomenon, responsible for in the world of about 800,000 deaths a yearone every 40 seconds.
Further food for thought also emerges from the report: the categories most at risk, for example, are the forces of order (over 40 suicides since the beginning of the year) and prisoners (over 30). Furthermore, the highest number of suicides was recorded in the North (133), followed by the South (131) and finally by Central Italy (87). For suicide attempts, however, Central Italy stands out (143), followed by the South (133) and the North (115). “Beyond the small differences .
What happened to the famous network?
What happened to those adequate suicide prevention policies involving all the actors involved, from psychologists to psychiatrists, from teachers to families?