HEALTH TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT AND SOCIAL NETWORK IN MENTAL HEALTH: A PILOT STUDY TO EVALUATE USE OF NEW TECHNOLOGY COMMUNICATION IN PREVENTION, MONITORING AND TREATMENT OF MENTAL DISORDERS IN TRENTINO REGION

The clinical use of Information Communication Technology tools can facilitate the support of population groups at risk and / or with chronic conditions. Social networks and other forms of communication represent an opportunity to improve the quality of care and patient empowerment. The study intends to evaluate, in accordance with the dictates of the HTA, the possibilities related to the use of social networking technologies in the prevention and taking care of mental illness. On the basis of these results and in agreement with the context of the Trentino health system, several application proposals will be developed for the treatment of patients with bipolar disorder. The conclusion of the evaluation, and the related clinical and organizational data to support the implementation process in the Trentino health system is expected in the month of October 2014

SUICIDAL PHENOMENON IN PANDEMIC TIMES .THE TRENTINO\u27S REALITY

Suicide is a major public health problem; according to the latest WHO data, it is among the top twenty causes of death in the world. After the sudden and unexpected spreading of a global pandemic in 2020, many mental health researchers have launched alarms about a possible suicide rates\u27 rise, due to the inevitable consequences of the ongoing social and health emergency. However, recent articles in scientific literature have disconfirmed this thesis. Trentino also seems not to deviate from this dynamic: preliminary data, collected in an unconventional, and not yet official way, have been able to show that in 2020 the suicide rate remained stable. The finding that excludes up to date such a rise in rates does not unfortunately provide any guarantee that the situation will remain constant over time, and that there cannot be significant differences regarding gender, ethnicity, religious faith, sexual orientation or social class in determining a different impact of the current crisis on the suicidal phenomenon. Further studies and insights into the processing of the data in our possession are needed. Difficulties and uncertainties connected to the covid-19, with which it is now clear that the community will have to "learn to live together", could also in the medium and long term constitute a prolonged stressgenerating element with a greater negative impact on the mental health of the population. It is essential, in light of the particular social and health situation we are experiencing, to carry out with even greater effectiveness, precision and continuity actions such as those promoted within the Invito alla Vita Project for the prevention of suicide, in order to guarantee the most effective prevention of this serious phenomenon. The psychological and social implications of the covid-19 pandemic will only be fully assessable in a few years, when the crisis will be effectively over. Only then we will be able to understand if the efforts put in place at a global level, and in particular in the province of Trento, have been effective in the managing of the suicidal phenomenon

SUICIDAL PHENOMENON IN PANDEMIC TIMES .THE TRENTINO\u27S REALITY

Suicide is a major public health problem; according to the latest WHO data, it is among the top twenty causes of death in the world. After the sudden and unexpected spreading of a global pandemic in 2020, many mental health researchers have launched alarms about a possible suicide rates\u27 rise, due to the inevitable consequences of the ongoing social and health emergency. However, recent articles in scientific literature have disconfirmed this thesis. Trentino also seems not to deviate from this dynamic: preliminary data, collected in an unconventional, and not yet official way, have been able to show that in 2020 the suicide rate remained stable. The finding that excludes up to date such a rise in rates does not unfortunately provide any guarantee that the situation will remain constant over time, and that there cannot be significant differences regarding gender, ethnicity, religious faith, sexual orientation or social class in determining a different impact of the current crisis on the suicidal phenomenon. Further studies and insights into the processing of the data in our possession are needed. Difficulties and uncertainties connected to the covid-19, with which it is now clear that the community will have to "learn to live together", could also in the medium and long term constitute a prolonged stressgenerating element with a greater negative impact on the mental health of the population. It is essential, in light of the particular social and health situation we are experiencing, to carry out with even greater effectiveness, precision and continuity actions such as those promoted within the Invito alla Vita Project for the prevention of suicide, in order to guarantee the most effective prevention of this serious phenomenon. The psychological and social implications of the covid-19 pandemic will only be fully assessable in a few years, when the crisis will be effectively over. Only then we will be able to understand if the efforts put in place at a global level, and in particular in the province of Trento, have been effective in the managing of the suicidal phenomenon

THE HELP-LINE “INVITO ALLA VITA”: A NEW PROJECT FOR SUICIDE PREVENTION IN TRENTINO REGION

Invito alla Vita" is a community-based suicide prevention project that officially started in Trentino in late 2008. The project was promoted by the local Health Services, trying from the beginning to involve other community subjects, and has been working over five years and a half in different directions, particularly promoting a phone help-line. The aims of the Invito alla Vita (IaV) Help Line have been clear from the beginning: decrease the sense of loneliness, offer encouragement and support, promote engagement with health services, reduce stigma and prejudice. Contrary to popular misconceptions, talking with people about suicide will not increase suicide risk, neither will it induce patients to commit suicide.The volunteers involved in the IaV help-line offer people empathic listening without judgment and easy tips, to reduce loneliness, sadness and supply reassurance that other people care. In this study we tried to deepen our knowledges about the volunteers’ motivations and necessities to use them for creating a better system of support: we realized indeed that continuous training and supervision, along with official awards given by community institutions, are basic factors to sustain the volunteers’ motives to cooperate with the help line

A "NO-RESTRAINT" PSYCHIATRIC DEPARTMENT: OPERATIVE PROTOCOLS AND OUTCOME DATA FROM THE “OPENED-DOORS EXPERIENCE” IN TRENTO

The "Open Doors” and no restraint project in the psychiatric department of Trento originated from de-institutionalization and empowerment practices, amply extended in the Mental Health Service of Trento over the past years. This paper aims to present the authorized operative protocols of no restraint methods and data from the first four years experience of no restraint management in the psychiatric Department of Trento. Avoiding physical restraint and confinement force every member of the ward staff to look for innovative solutions and means a deeper and strenuous engagement of the staff in the therapeutic relationship. We are aware that this is basically a small thing, and that certainly it will create many contradictions. We chose to stay on the other hand in these contradictions, and to witness that it is possible, and indeed useful. The great lesson we learnt over past years in Community Psychiatry was that only the hard experience of these contradictions can allow people to regain health, not just as assimilation to stereotyped models, but as adhibition of resources and self-determination, normally stolen by psychiatric illness

SUICIDE AND ATTEMPTED SUICIDE: EPIDEMIOLOGICAL SURVEILLANCE AS A CRUCIAL MEANS OF A LOCAL SUICIDE PREVENTION PROJECT IN TRENTO’S PROVINCE

The World Health Organization identifies suicide among the top 10 causes of death in many countries with an overall mortality rate of 16 per 100,000 inhabitants. Furthermore suicide attempts present a frequency 4-10 times greater than the suicidal events, representing also one of the main risk factors to lead to recurrent attempts of suicide. In 2008 the Autonomous Province of Trento launched a suicide prevention pogram called "Invitation to Life" which includes various interventions intended to counter the phenomenon of suicide in the region. Actually the epidemiological research upon the phenomenon of suicide in Trentino region is one of the main pillars of the project: it represents a fundamental requirement to identify risk and protective factors in the population in order to adopt more specific and effective preventive strategies. This article aims to present methods and instruments for epidemiological monitoring of suicide and attempted suicide which are applied in Trentino and to describe results after seven years from the beginning of the local prevention program “Invitation to life”

MENTAL ILLNESS AND PREJUDICES IN PSYCHIATRIC PROFESSIONALS Data from the social stigma questionnaire for psychiatric professionals: a multicentre study

The prejudices about mental illness and the related social stigma are still present in the population. People suffer from both the disease and the marginalization behaviors implemented by the "so-called healthy" towards them and their relatives. Even psychiatric professionals can get sick and suffer for the same reason. The authors of this multicentric study have focused their attention on the presence or absence of groups of psychiatric pathologies among the "insiders". The most frequent pathologies encountered were the mood and anxiety disorders, in a percentage similar to that of the general population. To continue the research on the stigma begun in a previous study, the authors asked themselves if there could be prejudices and/or stigma among psychiatric professionals towards sick colleagues, how they relate in the workplace and how they react to the behavior of colleagues. The stigma questionnaire has been used on psychiatric professionals, and 130 Italian colleagues were tested in the provinces of Avellino, Brindisi and Trento. The data were compared with those of the research on the stigma "Thinking of Psychiatric Disorders as" Normal "Illness" (Tavormina et al. 2016) and it emerged that among the attending professionals there are no statistically significant behaviors of marginalization, exclusion or stigma against sick colleagues, even if there is a certain discomfort in working together. Above all, it emerged that 80% of the interviewees, who have had work experience with sick colleagues, have replied that the latter can treat those who are also sick of their own disease, thus showing esteem and confidence in their work, in analogy with the Jungian thesis of the "wounded Healer" in the myth of the centaur Chiron

MENTAL ILLNESS AND PREJUDICES IN PSYCHIATRIC PROFESSIONALS Data from the social stigma questionnaire for psychiatric professionals: a multicentre study

The prejudices about mental illness and the related social stigma are still present in the population. People suffer from both the disease and the marginalization behaviors implemented by the "so-called healthy" towards them and their relatives. Even psychiatric professionals can get sick and suffer for the same reason. The authors of this multicentric study have focused their attention on the presence or absence of groups of psychiatric pathologies among the "insiders". The most frequent pathologies encountered were the mood and anxiety disorders, in a percentage similar to that of the general population. To continue the research on the stigma begun in a previous study, the authors asked themselves if there could be prejudices and/or stigma among psychiatric professionals towards sick colleagues, how they relate in the workplace and how they react to the behavior of colleagues. The stigma questionnaire has been used on psychiatric professionals, and 130 Italian colleagues were tested in the provinces of Avellino, Brindisi and Trento. The data were compared with those of the research on the stigma "Thinking of Psychiatric Disorders as" Normal "Illness" (Tavormina et al. 2016) and it emerged that among the attending professionals there are no statistically significant behaviors of marginalization, exclusion or stigma against sick colleagues, even if there is a certain discomfort in working together. Above all, it emerged that 80% of the interviewees, who have had work experience with sick colleagues, have replied that the latter can treat those who are also sick of their own disease, thus showing esteem and confidence in their work, in analogy with the Jungian thesis of the "wounded Healer" in the myth of the centaur Chiron

THE HELP-LINE “INVITO ALLA VITA”: A NEW PROJECT FOR SUICIDE PREVENTION IN TRENTINO REGION

Invito alla Vita" is a community-based suicide prevention project that officially started in Trentino in late 2008. The project was promoted by the local Health Services, trying from the beginning to involve other community subjects, and has been working over five years and a half in different directions, particularly promoting a phone help-line. The aims of the Invito alla Vita (IaV) Help Line have been clear from the beginning: decrease the sense of loneliness, offer encouragement and support, promote engagement with health services, reduce stigma and prejudice. Contrary to popular misconceptions, talking with people about suicide will not increase suicide risk, neither will it induce patients to commit suicide.The volunteers involved in the IaV help-line offer people empathic listening without judgment and easy tips, to reduce loneliness, sadness and supply reassurance that other people care. In this study we tried to deepen our knowledges about the volunteers’ motivations and necessities to use them for creating a better system of support: we realized indeed that continuous training and supervision, along with official awards given by community institutions, are basic factors to sustain the volunteers’ motives to cooperate with the help line

A "NO-RESTRAINT" PSYCHIATRIC DEPARTMENT: OPERATIVE PROTOCOLS AND OUTCOME DATA FROM THE “OPENED-DOORS EXPERIENCE” IN TRENTO

The "Open Doors” and no restraint project in the psychiatric department of Trento originated from de-institutionalization and empowerment practices, amply extended in the Mental Health Service of Trento over the past years. This paper aims to present the authorized operative protocols of no restraint methods and data from the first four years experience of no restraint management in the psychiatric Department of Trento. Avoiding physical restraint and confinement force every member of the ward staff to look for innovative solutions and means a deeper and strenuous engagement of the staff in the therapeutic relationship. We are aware that this is basically a small thing, and that certainly it will create many contradictions. We chose to stay on the other hand in these contradictions, and to witness that it is possible, and indeed useful. The great lesson we learnt over past years in Community Psychiatry was that only the hard experience of these contradictions can allow people to regain health, not just as assimilation to stereotyped models, but as adhibition of resources and self-determination, normally stolen by psychiatric illness