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Seminar “Community-based Treatment:
The Trieste Model”
On August 3-5 in Kragujevac the Helsinki Committee
organized the seminar “Community-Based Treatment: the Trieste Model”
for twenty nurses and medical technicians from four healthcare
institutions catering psychiatric patients and persons with mental
disabilities.
The seminar was held in the second year of the
implementation of the project “Civil Society Campaign for Efficient
Protection of Persons with Mental Disorders” realized with the
assistance of the Royal Norwegian Embassy, Belgrade.
The seminar was lectured by experts from Mental
Health Services from Trieste, head nurse Garbiella Skerlic and
senior medical technician Roberto Sau. Participants were nurses and
medical technicians from Special Psychiatric Hospital “Dr. Slavoljub
Bakalovic” in Vrsac, Special Psychiatric Hospital “Sveti Vraci” in
Novi Knezevac, Mental Health Counseling Center in Kragujevac and
Medical Center in Sombor.
Psychiatrist Dr. Vladimir Jovic of the
International Aid Network IAN, Dr. Mira Petrovic of the Psychiatric
Clinic “Dr. Laza Lazarevic” – Department in Padinska Skela, and
Marko Djoric, expert working on projects “Eurostart International
Decentralized Cooperation Program” and “Development of Comprehensive
Independent Living Support System in Central Serbia” (realized in
cooperation with healthcare institutions in Vojvodina and Central
Serbia, interested in the establishment of community-based care
systems), also took part in the three-day seminar.
The lecturers from Italy presented the model
whereby Mental Health Services were established and are functioning
now and a documentary on the beginnings of deinstitutionalization in
Trieste and other parts of Italy. Apart from organizational and
personnel-related structures, their presentations included financial
indicators testifying that community-based care of persons with
mental disorders cost by far less than their accommodation in
asylum-like institutions characteristic of today’s Serbia – and once
typical in Trieste and Italy too.
Participants in the seminar also had the
opportunity to learn about day to day functioning of mental health
services covering now the entire territory and population of the
Trieste municipality. Through questions posed and ensuing
discussion, participating nurses and technicians also gained insight
into the advantages community-based care and treatment, but also
into the challenges of the transformation of institutionalized into
deinstitutionalized systems.
The seminar – as well as other activities of this
and some other of the Committee’s ongoing projects – was organized
with the consent and support of the Ministry of Healthcare and
Minister Dr. Zlatibor Loncar to whom, in May 2015, the project team
four programs focusing, fully or partially, Serbia’s healthcare
institutions and the reform of the psychiatric care system.
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