Home Assistance for Patients Suffering from Medium Psychiatric Disorders

Project location: Italy, Rome
Project start date: December 2008 - Project end date: December 2009
Project number: 2008-29
Beneficiary: Ambulatorio Psichiatrico-Psicologico Associato “Angelo Azzurro”

 

The activities  the Organization has been involved in during these years, as regard the treatment of psychotic patients have emphasized the major importance of the patients' families in their rehabilitation. In order to understand the needs, the expectations, the difficulties and even the potential of the patients to treat, it is important to create a system of supports and communication among the patient, his family and the rehabilitating team if we want to achieve clinical improvements. The "Angelo Azzurro" home assistance methodology turned out to be extremely successful in reducing the number of stress-inducing situations as the patient is not exposed to highly emotional situations. This encourages more harmonious and collaborative interaction strategies from both the patient and his family. The home assistance operator is given the privileged chance of experiencing the emotional atmosphere in the family and then be a part of their affective life. With the help of this "third eye" it is possible to better understand the family in their living context and to gradually modify their communication quality. It is also possible to help the family to create problem solving strategies especially during critical moments of high conflict. In the past, for these kind of interventions, "Angelo Azzurro" cooperated with many ASL (Public Health local Units) in Rome and with private concerns such as surgeries and communities in order to create projects for patients' social reinstatement. This experience led the organization to believe that the cure of patients suffering from serious psychiatric disorders must provide for the continuity of treatments as well as the total work charge of the whole medical team. Because such a support makes the patient not to feel alone and so to be able to experiment himself with more confidence in the social environment as he becomes more aware of a continuous and constant support that, with the passing of time, will allow him to experiment his independence.

The Project on Home Assistance Rehabilitation relates to a number of assistance services in the patients' homes with the aim of allowing patients with psychiatric disabilities to remain in their domestic environments in order to better their quality of life supporting their families and avoiding isolation, social emarginalization and institutionalization. The project is addressed to 3 patients suffering from paranoid schizophrenia showing a lack of compliance with pharmacological treatments and having limited financial and social resources. The main aim of the Organization intervention is to stimulate in the patient behavioral, clinical and psychological changes in order to improve his adaptation inside his own belonging context. All this will not only satisfy the patient's needs but will also rediscover and stimulate individual resources which have been forgotten or put aside by means of the discovery and development of new intervention strategies.
The strategies to be carried out inside the project will aim at stimulating the abilities and resources of the subject to treat starting from the identification and assessment of his heeds, his disability and his I.Q through an initial neuro-cognitive screening and a global evaluation of the subject himself as well as his environment. These strategies will also extend and strengthen the already existing resources and even, where possible, create some new ones. The specialized professional taking part in the project will be: 2 operators for rehabilitation, 1 psychologist, 2 psychiatrists, a musicotherapist. The suggested outside activities for rehabilitation will be: Musicotherapy, Sports, Theme Guided Tours, Cinema, Summer places to stay at.

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