Italian Association for Mental Health (A.I.S.ME.)
Mental problems are a part of every day life. Their effects can sometimes be profound, not only for the persons directly affected but also for their family, their friends and their community.
These effects are made worse by the tendency of society to marginalize these people.
A.I.S.ME. has been founded to promote better understanding and acceptance within society of mental problems and to promote mental health. It endorses the Manifesto of E.R.C. of the W.F.M.H. adopted in Prague in 1991, and the United Nations Charter of Human Rights.
A.I.S.ME. is committed to execute the principles of the “Italian Psychiatric Reform” and to pay particular attention to regional and national legislation to allow these principles to be carried out in practice.
A.I.S.ME. is also convinced of the importance of widely publicising its aims and activities because its difference in approach to psychiatric problems to that of other Europeans organizations.
A.I.S.ME. considers service users involvement in planning, management and monitoring to be of paramount importance. A new generation of “professional service users” can help the development pf psychiatric services by collaboration and by contribution of their own experiences.
A.I.S.ME. also feels that the families of the service users can play a vital role in the promotion of new services and in the dissolution of existing prejudices surrounding mental problems.
A.I.S.ME. believes it necessary to secure the proper execution of existing legislation by the creation of specific advocacy groups.
A.I.S.ME. also recognises the importance of the role of other support mechanisms which exist in the form of various associations, voluntary groups and cooperatives.
A.I.S.ME. also believes to be important to stimulate international debate on current therapeutic practices and to try to produce reorientation, away from the traditionsl doctor-patient model.
In addition A.I.S.ME. believes:
– more alternatives to institutionalization must be provided;
– that therapeutic interventions by coercive methods must be
drastically reduced;
– that the use of medications in the the treatment of mental pro-
blems must be rationalised;
– that the current sistem of certification to bestow immunity
from the law and the authoritarian pseudoprotective nature of
forensic psichiatric hospitals must be addressed and changed.
The connection between socio-economic factors and the mental health of the population is now widely accepted. Consequently A.I.S.ME. believes it to be important that every citizen, regardless of age, socio-economic standing or other criteria, should not only have access to curative services, but should have their basic needs met as the first priority in order to prevent mental problems.
June 1993