“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”. This is the alarm that comes from the Italian Society of Psychiatry on 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.
“Today – he underlines – the number of users who turn to public services has changed. Only 20-25% have psychotic and bipolar, depressive or anxiety disorders, while personality disorders, drug use and neurodevelopmental disorders such as ADHD and autism have increased”.
At the same time, “the enormous increase in referrals to Psychiatric Services by offenders is shifting the unsolved problems” of prisons to the Rems and other structures of the Department of Mental Health“. Psychiatry, “defenceless, is forced to deal with those who cannot abide by the rules of coexistence”: “there are hundreds of reports of violent events every day, but thousands are not reported due to the impossibility of intervention and response even by the relevant bodies”.
For this, “huge investments in mental health are needed to fill the personnel shortage at all levels. A stable adjustment of funds is essential in an amount not less than 8-9% of the health fund, 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”.
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