EPA-1433 - Study of Fifteen years of Compulsory Treatment: Evolution of Diagnoses, Psychopathology and Behaviours

Abstract

Introduction

The effects of the revolutionary Italian law (180/1978) closing the mental hospitals, limiting the TSO (compulsory treatment) to the general hospitals, have received scant analysis from researchers, for various reasons explaned in the paper.

Objectives

To confirm if TSO may represent a useful indicator to evaluate the reform. TSO is currently under debate in the Italian Parliament dispite the absence of reliable data. Furthermore the legislation elsewhere in Europe is comparatively different.

Aims

To conduct a statistical survey to observe diachronically the variations in characteristics (modality, length, diagnoses, frequency, gender, age, nationality...)

Methods

Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the written records of TSOs in the City of Turin from 2006 to 2011, over 13,000, stored in Turin court archives (special ad hoc software was created to enable investigation) and a comparison of the results with those of a similar study conducted by our Department of Mental Health for the years 1985-1998.

Results and conclusions

Many results are discussed but we highlight the TSO length (7 days, renewable) which does not need to be modified, the disclosure of diagnoses reveals how much TSO serves as a tool of social control and how diagnoses are prevalently behavioural and outside the leading classification systems. Comparing the 2006-2011 and 1985-1998 results showed that the number of foreign persons and average age of the subjects has increased considerably in the last twenty years. Finally there has been a significant increase of personality disorders and a reduction of schizophrenic psychoses.