The twenty years long experience of the "San Camillo - Forlanini" Public Hospital Corporation SAIFIP (Centre for the treatment of Gender Identity Disorders and Sex Reassignment Therapy) in Rome

Abstract

The considerations expressed by the authors in this document are based on their own personal working experience as members of the interdisciplinary team of SAIFIP (Servizio di Adeguamento tra Identita Fisica e Identita Psichica) operating since 1992 at the San Camillo-Forlanini Public Hospital Corporation in Rome (Italy) within the framework of the Reconstruction and Plastic Surgery Unit. The SAIFIP team has set up a protocol that offers, within the Italian National Healthcare, integrated and interdisciplinary clinical services for persons affected by Gender Identity Disorders that lays emphasis on the psychological, medicalsurgical and social-legal aspects implied in the process of sex-reassignment therapy. Such protocol originates from the indispensable integration and coordination of the various reference theories and their models which form the training basis of the different healthcare service providers and from the pressing need to organize the many therapeutic procedures involved (endocrinology therapy, surgery, counselling, psychotherapy, socio-therapy) together with the patient, with his/her family and with his/her extended ecosystem.