[Shadows and errors of a law: the opinion of clinicians]

Abstract

A new Italian law (81/14) recently established dismission of all Psychiatric Forensic Hospitals and the transferring of old and new “forensic” patients to the local Mental Health Department, at time in many instances in the same common settings of acute psychiatric services, community and territorial psychiatry mixed with “common” psychiatric patients. The preoccupation is high for communality of psychopaths, insane criminal patients and drug-dependent violent patients together with young first-episode schizophrenic patients, anorexic girls, older depressive patients, and so on. This change already introduced several problems with strong preoccupation among operators, other patients and public opinion as concerns both treatment efficiency and safety of the cure.