They weren’t enough. Not a torchlight procession with thousands of psychiatrists and healthcare workers in the most important squares in Italy against violence and in memory of Barbara Capovani one year ago. Not letters, interviews and appeals from the Italian Society of Psychiatry to the Institutions and the President of the Republic on the occasion of National Mental Health Day last 20 October. No initiative has achieved its intended purpose: increasing safety in the workplace. To date, no concrete response. A second letter to President Mattarella was recently sent by 450 psychiatrists. Here too, no response for now.
Appeal by two thousand psychiatrists for their murdered colleague: “Maximum security paths are needed”
Over 2 thousand cases of violence in healthcare every year
For a topic, among other things, which extends to the entire medical field: according to INAIL, every year there are over 2 thousand cases of violence in healthcare. Six thousand in the three-year period 2020-2022, with an increase of 14% on the previous three-year period allowing an easy calculation for 2023: around 2300 cases, of which just as many are milder and unreported but no less important.
Of all these, 34% occur in a psychiatric setting with 21 in the emergency room according to Anaao-Assomed data. Among the open problems is the abolition of the Lamorgese Circular on the prohibition of police intervention in emergency rooms and departments, a decision that has disappointed and left doctors and health workers alone in the face of attacks and made management even more difficult of violent patients in psychiatry wards.
A torchlight procession in Italian squares to remember the psychiatrist Barbara Capovani
The psychiatrist killed
“I knew Barbara Capovani, she was a tireless and passionate doctor, I don’t remember ever seeing her without a smile. She handled every situation in a competent and reassuring way, finding the best solution for everyone. A year has passed since her death – she explains Liliana Dell’Osso, president-elect SIP – . A year in which, aside from occasional phrases, the problem of psychiatry in Italy and the safety of departments (and consequently of mental health centers) remained buried under a sea of declarations without real solutions. Because the daily violence to which operators, nurses, psychologists and psychiatrists are subjected has now become impossible to quantify, given that the complaints do not provide any confirmation, except in dramatic cases like this or in the case of hospitalization”.
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“Certainly the Lamorgese Circular on the ban on police intervention in emergency rooms and departments has disappointed doctors and made the management of violent patients in psychiatry departments even more difficult – he specifies Emi Bondi, president of SIP – . Alongside there are the problems of managing the emergency room, the emergency and the Residences for the execution of security measures (Rems), mistaken for judicial psychiatric hospitals, as if law 81, which decreed their closure, did not had ever existed. In short, the role that is being given again to psychiatry as manager of aggression means that healthcare professionals are increasingly called upon to deal with all social deviance, without discrimination between those who are truly mentally ill and in need of treatment. compared to those who are just violent”.
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The law
“Certainly a law full of good intentions but applied poorly and poorly, and managed worse despite the commitment of the medical and nursing staff – he explains Guido Di Sciascio, national secretary of SIP – . The common denominator is the attribution to the psychiatrist of the role of ‘jailor’ with the task of ‘social’ control of the patient. Everything that Basaglia, in his lucid foresight, had managed to erase forever with his Law.”
A changing society
“The psychiatry of these ’20s’ of the new millennium has nothing to do with that of the seventies of the last century – adds Prof. Dell’Osso -. Society has changed enormously, psychic pathologies have grown in number , because they are diagnosed more precisely and earlier, treatments have been revolutionized, and yet… yet resources have remained stagnant, at least with respect to the mental health needs of this new society.” “And so – concludes Dr. Bondi – the local and hospital services for mental health are closed, the number of beds in the always full departments is reduced, with the result of an increasingly marked escape from the public service, which is no longer to find the staff, especially doctors and nurses, necessary to maintain the services capable of responding to the needs of patients”.
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– 2024-04-19 17:17:05
