COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH: HEALTH BUDGETS IN A MULTIFACTORIAL CONTEXT

Abstract

In the last three years the Department of Mental Health of the ASP (Provincial Health Company) Agrigento (Italy) has become the protagonist of an attempt to change the cultural reality of mental health in its own territory, to ready local communities to overcome the prejudices linked to the stigma connected to psychiatric pathology through the implementation of an experimental project funded by the Sicily Region, the PON (National Operational Plan) 19.2. At the same time, the Department of Mental Health of the Provincial Health Authority (ASP) has experimented with the introduction of flexibility in care pathways for serious patients so as to pursue a model of integrated intervention combining the efforts public health, private social, citizens (training / work, residential care) in which public health continues to respect the responsibility and ownership of the service but is enriched with new human resources to promote patient citizenship itineraries.

All this is in order to prevent mental health problems, stimulate the inclusion and active participation of those suffering from mental health problems - recognizing the experience and skills of patients and caregivers as an essential basis for the planning and development of mental health services.

The goal of the project was to reduce the isolation of psychiatric patients by adopting new methods that determined an economic saving and a higher quality in therapeutic results: tools within the Health Budget