The research promoted by the Don Luigi Di Liegro International Foundation and the Fondation d'Harcourt, which since their inception have invested energy and resources in the field of mental health with multiple initiatives, had the aim of achieving three concrete objectives in the metropolitan area.
READ THE SUMMARY OF THE RESEARCH
The first is to draw the attention of citizens and institutions to the issue of mental health in a phase of real difficulty for the entire service sector called to promote and protect it, for two main reasons. The first refers to the long season of national spending review policies that did not spare the welfare system, a season replicated and aggravated in the Lazio context by the plan to reduce the Region's deficits in healthcare. This has particularly penalized a sector such as mental health, whose production factor is essentially made up of human resources. The second reason consists in the merging and reorganization of the local health authorities, on the basis of a national strategic orientation which adds complexity and requires adaptation to an institutional-organizational reorganization of healthcare which also occurred in configuring a new and larger Department of Mental Health. In the hope that the phase of recovery from the deficit and the transition of the system will be completed as soon as possible, it is necessary to face this challenge not only with concerned attention but also trying to seize the opportunities.
In addition to turning the spotlight on mental health in the metropolitan context, the research has a peculiarly cognitive objective, an objective necessary to cover a gap in research on the sector in the metropolitan context. The research follows rigorous method parameters and is carried out with multiple data collection tools, from structured questionnaires to question grids for qualitative interviews. The investigation, which involved all 5 former ASLs - namely the newly created ASL ROMA 1, 2 and 3 - examined the needs of users and their families and analyzed their relationships with mental health services , verified operational processes and collected evaluation elements of the service offering with their critical issues and innovations, strengths and weaknesses, in the awareness that a more in-depth knowledge of the phenomenon helps reflection and therefore change. The research design involves all the actors or stakeholders in the sector, users, family members, operators and managers, family associations and volunteers, representatives of mental health consultancies. Mental health cannot help but enhance and integrate the different components and converging resources - including those of the Municipality and Municipalities - as the title of this research recalls: "Networks of care and mental distress: research path for an Observatory in Rome".
