Partners

Partner description

The Azienda Sanitaria Locale Torino 3 (ASL TO3 hereinafter) is one of the 13 public health territorial agencies located in Piedmont, a North-West region of Italy with 4,500,000 inhabitants. ASL TO3 manages public health services for a 600,000 people catchment area. Public Health Agencies like ASL TO3 are organised in specialist departments. Among these, the Mental Health Department manages and treats all psychiatric outpatient and inpatient facilities. ASL TO3 Mental Health Department (DSM hereinafter) includes 11 outpatients facilities, three inpatients psychiatric emergency hospital wards, two daily treatment centres, and many residential facilities (supported houses) where more than 200 patients are living for long periods in small groups (4/5 people each).

Since 2015, the DSM has been considered intercompany because it includes San Luigi Gonzaga University Hospital Agency as well. Overall, DSM of ASL TO3 treats about 9,000 cases per year. They receive about 3,000 new cases every year, with an estimated proportion of depressive disorders of around 20%. Over the years, a specific pathway has been developed for the assessment and treatment of people suffering from depression. This pathway encompasses an assessment stage of the patients in the Mental Health Outpatient Services and, when appropriate, this is followed by referral to a therapeutic treatment of low, medium, or high intensity, depending on the clinical needs of the patients (psychotherapeutic and/or pharmacological).

Inpatients can be treated in three wards in general hospitals (with 15 beds each for psychiatric emergencies, and an average length of stay of around 12 days), or in two private accredited neuropsychiatric facilities (with 120 beds in total, and an average length of stay of around 36 days). However, it is currently difficult to provide adequate therapeutic treatment to such a large number of patients only with traditional approaches (e.g. “face-to-face” psychotherapy), especially as the number of patients with depressive disorders will increase significantly in the next decades (World Health Organization, 2001).

Service description

During the MasterMind European project (2014-2017), ASL TO3 has introduced the use of a cCBT service for treating depression in 160 patients, and has fostered the use of video-conference system for clinical monitoring of patients’ status. During ImpleMentAll (IMA), these services will be provided as one of the usual treatments in the outpatients facilities. To follow this purpose the e-medicine skilled psychologists of the IMA team will work as a part of multiprofessional outpatient psychiatric teams.