Remote mental health rehabilitation: Social Health Educators between experience and innovation

Abstract

Following the Covid-19 pandemic, in our country strict containment measures have been put in place to safeguard, first and foremost, vulnerable swathes of the population, including people affected by psychiatric disorders. Nevertheless, a large part of Mental Health Centers activities, territorial rehabilitation, counselling sessions, aid and psychoeducational activities, social skills training, workshops, as well as family support, monitoring and network activities with rehabilitation centers workers and users have been rearranged in another modality, namely the so-called “remote modality”. Despite the undisputed and essential value of human contact and face-to-face relationships, the work reported here shows the importance, for Mental Health Services, of employing communicative modalities, like the current alternative virtual ones which, after the initial difficulties were overcome, have been appreciated, further implemented and widely used by now because of their efficacy, so much so that it is thought that they could eventually be combined with traditional modalities.