The times they are a-changin: implementing new psychiatric rehabilitation models within a community care in the post COVID-19 era

摘要

As of November 30, the COVID-19 epidemic resulted in more than 50 000 deaths and 1.50 million confirmed cases. From the early stages of the pandemic, community medical interventions played a key role against the infection spreading and as first-line treatments to avoid hospitalization (1). For the public mental health policy in Italy, “the person as a community resource” has traditionally been a central point within a post-institutional psychiatric care model, aimed at combining the individual unmet needs with a care responsibility of the native community (i.e. family members, health and social services) (2). The COVID-19 pandemic contributed to revive a “community-centered” mental healthcare system, together with the supremacy of public health interventions over the private ones (3). For this new, comprehensive “proximity welfare”, people with mental disorders are not isolated at home, but continuously connected with their community services, also supported with “telepsychiatry” and modern, “in vivo” rehabilitation interventions (e.g. Individual Placement and Support [IPS] and Personal Health Budget [PHB]) (4).