Lazio starts the process for the law with which to create the ‘primary care psychologist’. We will go to the psychologist as to the family doctor. What is it for. What does it do
“We will pay the consequences in a few years“, Or”our boys will be scored for life”. THE “our mind can no longer accept restrictions on freedom, breaking the rules is a kind of reaction“. These are phrases that in recent months we have heard more and more often: debates on TV, in the street, in chat. Everywhere. All concentrated to try to understand how much the pandemic has changed our lives. It affected the well-being of our mind. How much will it do in the future. Paradoxically it took a tragedy like that of covid-19 to make us understand that the health of our mind is important as much as that of our body.
The Lazio Region has taken note of this. Those who do not carry the signs of Covid in their body risk bearing the signs in their mind: the fear of going out and touching objects, the compulsive reaction of disinfecting hands, the instinct to keep others at a distance. A new health figure is needed: the primary care psychologist. In practice: go to the psychologist as well as to the general practitioner.
Go to the process for the law
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The first step in establishing this figure has been taken. The bill that bears the signature of the regional councilor Sara Battisti was hired by the regional health commission. “Mental health is an aspect that we can no longer underestimate and we have learned it in this period of pandemic crisis due to Covid-19”- said the regional councilor.
He will allow, when he has completed his course, to go to the family doctor and be treated for free not only when you have an infection or flu, but also if you have panic attacks or depressive states, just to mention some of the best known pathologies.
The confirmation of how serious the situation is comes from the president of the Lazio psychologists’ order Federico Conte. Dice: «The cases of psychological distress reported in recent years by statistics have experienced afurther accentuation with the advent of the Covid emergency».
Yet this bill was conceived and presented long before the coronavirus came to disrupt our lives. In Lazio the proposal had arrived in 2019. “The Lazio Region – explains Sara Battisti – by incardinating this law, it proves to be at the forefront and to think about the well-being of its citizens in an organic way. There are pathologies that are mistakenly treated as diseases of the body but affect people’s minds. This can no longer be seen as discriminatory, why not there is nothing to be ashamed of having problems with depression, anxiety or panic attacks, for example».
Covid is scary
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Pathologies that are unfortunately on the rise in the last year. The latest statistics tell us that, in the period of Covid, 14% started taking psychotropic drugs, 19% of those who already took them increased the dosage and 20% reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. (Read here Psychologists: identity crises and depression are on the rise in Lazio).
«The data on the consumption of Benzodiazepines also cause concern – highlights the Regional Councilor – just think that the ones that were provided to us in 2018, when I started working on the Proposal, spoke already of a consumption of this drug for as many as 50 people per 1,000 inhabitants, one in 20 people in practice. Alarming data that must be put to rest immediately“.
What will happen specifically? The Lazio Region will establish, for the time being experimental, a list of primary care psychologists, increasing local health services. Professionals who will work alongside general practitioners, thus giving all citizens, and not just those who can afford it from an economic point of view, to have psychological support. Because we know well that going to the psychologist costs and not everyone can do it. But this bill also represents a first step to change our culture, our habitsi, and demonstrate that mental health is as important as physical health.
How to get to the psychologist
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Now the process includes a series of hearings and amendments in the Commissions. Once we arrive at the final text there will be the passage in the classroom. The opinion of the category will be positive. He has declared Federico Conte that “The bill for the experimentation of the ‘Psychologist for primary care’ represents an important step forward for the health of citizens and the opening towards a renewed and more complete idea of well-being».
“The new figure that would be born with this law canntercept a broad spectrum of issues. It is facilitated by the fact of operating in close contact with the general practitioner and in connection with other specialist profiles. – continues the president of the Order – If established, the figure of the ‘primary care psychologist’ will contribute to significantly raise the quality of health system performance. It will offer important support to the many citizens».
A sound mind in a sound body, in the meaning that Juvenal gave to this expression in his satires. Health of soul and body as the goods to which man should aspire.
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