Through personal stories and new data, it shows how this process is worsening the conditions of fragile and lonely patients’ recovery. In Italy we reconstructed the untold story of Fabio: a 60-year-old man who, after committing a minor drug-related crime a decade ago has been caged in a circuit of private neo-asylum facilities that are paid (through accreditation) by the Italian public health administration. The private facilities where Fabio has been hospitalised for so long all are connected to the French transnational group Clariane group which, after scandals for the mistreatment of elderly people in France, started a “mental health business” in Italy (Lazio region) and Spain (Madrid and Catalonia).
The project also focuses on how enforced public territorial mental health service offer alternatives to the institutionalisation of patients. Among the good practices: “no restraint” psychiatric wards in hospitals and the valorisation of the work of “experts with experience” (former psychiatric patients helping other people with mental health suffering).
Key findings
- In Italy psychiatric patients are often kept for many years in private psychiatric facilities, whose expensive fees are paid by the State (through regional accreditation) despite they would able to live independently with smaller (and less expensive) public support;
- While psychiatric facilities declare they “rehabilitate” patients, the opposite is true: patients inside these facilities are denied any independent action and – as a consequence – they lose their autonomy
- In Italy the creation of the figure of the “support administrator” for psychiatric patients has encouraged their institutionalisation in private residences: if their client-patients are locked up in residences (instead of living independently) the people in this profession get paied – around 1000 euro - every year for doing nothing apart from paying private residence fees.
- Transnational companies like Clariane group are benefiting from the privatisation of mental health services and of its consequence: the growing institutionalisation or re-institutionalisation of patients.
- Public territorial mental health services focused on the individual needs of patients and on their social inclusion are helping them deinstitutionalise, live independent lives, while saving public money.
Impact
The reporting has already had an impact in Italy, including being discussed at a hearing in the Italian parliament. Most recently, the issue has been brought to the attention of a senator from the opposition Democratic Party, who successfully secured an amendment to the finance bill passed at the end of 2025. This amendment allocates €200,000 for national and regional monitoring of mechanical restraints and makes it mandatory.
Image credit: ©Marco Baroncini. Psychiatric patients who have been hospitalized for many years in Lazio private residences now live independent lives thanks to a project by the Mental Health Center “Roma 4” and Sant Egidio community.
