AISMe, Italy

Associazione Italiana per la Salute Mentale

AISMe (Italian Mental Health Association), has been estabilished in 1993 in Prato under the WFMH (World Federation for Mental Health) auspices and with the sympathy of several italian realities which had participated at the Prato self-help initiatives since the end of the 80s.

One of the principal aims has been and is nowdays the promotion of self-help in mental health.

The members are about 200: mental health professionals, users, relatives, people with some interest in this field and ten affiliated groups or associations.

According to the AISMe philosophy and in sintony with the WFMH, everybody nevermind if professional, user, relative and so on, can take part at every level of the association. AISMe is not the association of a specific group of people with special interests, but is the association of all people involved in mental health.

An other important issue is to activate resources and to consider tue users themseveles as resources.

Now AISMe is formed by the former national AISMe and by two regional sections (Tuscany and Trento) with their autonomous constitution.

The national AISMe has a national board with 12 elected members, representing 6 regions and with an elected president and a director.

In the past AISMe had the task to choose the three italian representatives for the ERC of the WFMH.

The AISMe projects are related mainly to self-help. Some of them have not only local but also national and international characteristics; see as example: the "Italian Mental Health Week", the "Evaluation of services by users", the "Intergroup on sef help" , the "Intervoice" (for voices heares) and the "Advocacy" projects.

There are many other local projects for education, for leisure and for care with a very close involvement of the local governements.

Recently a book on the relationship between professionals and self-help has been published by AISMe as well as many other interesting documents on mental health; many of these have been translated if done in other countries.

January 2001