[SPS Conference June 2009 - Practical training in general health and mental health facilities] - Report 2 – Practical Training in the SPDC.

Abstract

In this talk we will report on a case dealt with during our practical training experience at the SPDC ‘Psychiatric Service for Diagnosis and Care” at the Carlo Forlanini Hospital in Rome. We will try to show the specificity of the goals and the methodological problems related to organising a clinical psychology-psychotherapy intervention in this specific context. 
During our traineeship we developed the idea that the organisation of any psychotherapeutic initiative that is proposed as being useful in the department, poses a problem: knowledge of the structural and cultural constraints of the context. 
We will talk about of an admission that we participated in as trainees and that in our training experience has assumed the role of “critical” case. It was a situation that was strongly at odds with our system of expectations and thus triggered an unexpected surge of discussions, of interest and of study in our work with the psychologists who were our practical training tutors at the SPDC, as well as with our teachers and fellow-students at the school.
An eighteen-year-old boy, Lorenzo is brought to the hospital. He arrives at Emergency accompanied by his family due to an episode of confusion that occurred at work, with auditive hallucinations and misperceptions. The psychiatrist at the SPDC, called by Emergency for a consultation, decides to admit him to hospital. Lorenzo has just turned eighteen, he studies, works as an actor, and lived with his parents in Australia until 2001, when he returned to Italy with his mother and sister with whom he currently lives. His parents are separated. This is the information in his clinical record.