[SPS Conference June 2009 - Practical training in general health and mental health facilities] - Report 1 – Practical training experience in rehabilitation centers.

Abstract

Our report is based on practical training carried out in two centers in Rome, the first dealing with social rehabilitation, the second with therapy 
The rehabilitation center houses ten patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. They are cared for by a multidisciplinary team.
The therapeutic center houses 12 patients and the staff is formed entirely of psychologists. In this center the therapeutic-rehabilitative intervention is based on the concept of therapeutic trust, that is, on the privileged relationship that is established between the patient and the staff-member he is entrusted to. 
What is common to the two centers is the fact that they are both residential: the patients live together for a limited time and experience daily life with other patients and with the staff.
The practical training prompted us to ask several questions, for instance, what makes a family or a Mental Health Center send a patient to a Center? And how can a psychiatric diagnosis be integrated with the goal of rehabilitation or of a return to society?
In the practical training we tried to construct some hypotheses on these questions. We will make some comments on a critical event: a patient’s leaving the center without prior arrangement with the staff. This event allows us to deal with some of the aspects of the relation between patients, the family and the center.
We will examine this event through the story of Angela, a resident in the social-rehabilitation center. Our goal is to give the event of “going away” a meaning, by linking it to the patients’ history and to the demand they make of the center.