According to the 2020 Mental Health Report, 728,338 people in Italy needed psychiatric care from specialist services during 2020, in practice 143.4 per 10 thousand adult inhabitants, with regional differences ranging from 34.2 in Molise to 195.4 in Umbria. Users are female in 53.6% of cases, while the composition by age reflects the aging of the general population, with a large percentage of patients over 45 years of age (69.0%).
They were 232,376 people who in 2020 asked for help from mental health services for the first time in their lives.
This is what emerges from the last one Report on Mental Health published by the Ministry of Health, which constitutes, at a national level, the richest source of information on health and social care interventions for adults with mental health problems and their families.
The Mental Health Report offers the reader an overview of the evidence emerging from the various information sources available. The data is collected through the SISM (Mental Health Information System) which represents the key tool for planning at the regional and local level of care provision, as well as for design strategies at a national level, modulated over medium-long periods, in consideration of the trends in the prevalence of the main mental disorders, which is associated with different degrees of disability, individual and family suffering, as well as heavy economic and social costs.
The users of psychiatric services are in 53.6% cases women and in 69% cases they are over 45 years of age. In both sexes, there are fewer patients under the age of 25 while the highest concentration occurs between 45 and 64 years.
The most frequent pathologies are depression (31.2 cases per 10,000 inhabitants), schizophrenia and other functional psychoses (29.9), neurotic and somatoform syndromes (18), mania and bipolar affective disorders (11.9) , personality and behavioral disorders (10.3). Among males, schizophrenic disorders, personality disorders, substance abuse disorders and mental retardation are more frequent, while women are predominantly affected by affective, neurotic and depressive disorders. In particular, for depression the rate among women is almost double that of males: 40.4 per 10,000 inhabitants versus 24.2.
Among younger users of local services, neurotic and somatoform syndromes predominate; the prevalence of users with schizophrenic psychosis is maximum around the age of 50, while affective disorders progressively increase across the age groups up to 64 years. As is Depression is also a pathology that becomes more frequent with increasing age reaching a peak at 55-64 years in both sexes.
The services provided in 2020 by local services were 8,299,120, with an average of 12.3 services per user. The 33% of the interventions is represented by nursing activities at home and in the territory, the 22.8% by psychiatric activity, the 11.4% by territorial rehabilitation and resocialization activities.
As regards hospital care, in 2020 there were 84,491 discharges from psychiatric facilities (public and private), with an average stay of 13.4 days. Emergency room admissions for psychiatric pathologies are there were 421,208, 3.2% of the total number of accesses to the ED.
The average annual expenditure for psychiatric care in 2020 was 67.5 euros for each resident. For drugs, the total gross expenditure on drugs antidepressants was over 391 million euros in the affiliated assistance regime (with a number of packages exceeding 37 million) and 1 million euros in the direct distribution regime (with a number of packages equal to 496,762). For the category of antipsychotics gross expenditure exceeding 77 million euros for the affiliated (5.9 million packages) and approximately 72 million euros for the direct (6.7 million packages). For the category Lithium the gross expenditure under the agreement was approximately 3.6 million euros (900,840 packs) and 55,208 euros in direct distribution (24,349 packs).
In 2020 the mental health information system detected activity data of 1,299 territorial services, 1,949 residential structures and 811 semi-residential structures which refer to approximately 94% of the DSM. In 2020 the number of active SPDCs (Psychiatric Diagnosis and Treatment Service) is equal to 328, with a total of 4,156 beds for ordinary hospitalizations and 310 beds for day hospital admissions; the hospital structures in agreement that provide psychiatric assistance activities are equal to 18 with a total of beds for ordinary hospitalization equal to 792 and 3 places for day hospital. For the whole of Italy, the supply of beds in ordinary hospitalization is 9.9 per 100,000 adult inhabitants.
The overall endowment of the personal within the public psychiatric operational units, in 2020, it amounted to 28,807 units, while 12,176 units who operate in healthcare facilities affiliated with the Department of Mental Health.
