Stories from Italian Forensic Psychiatric Hospitals

This book offers reflections on emerging issues in psychiatry today, told through the lens of interviews conducted with patients of the former Forensic Psychiatric Hospitals in Italy. Using narrativization, this book brings together clinical cases told in the first person which have allowed the author to develop insights into these issues. The author considers the patient/offender who poses a series of questions about mental illness itself, its origins, the factors related to its onset, such as substances, differential diagnosis, treatment paths (both pharmacological and rehabilitative) and the cultural factors that may influence the outcomes, providing invaluable insights for clinicians, researchers and students of Psychiatry and Psychology in international settings. Jacopo Santambrogio, psychiatrist with phenomenological and psychoanalytic training, works in the field of psychiatric rehabilitation at Adele Bonolis - AS.FRA. Onlus Foundation, Vedano al Lambro, Italy. He also works in the field of intellectual disability and autism at the Presidio "G. Corberi" and RSD "Beato Papa Giovanni XXIII" of Limbiate, ASST Brianza and his work focusses on the study of intellectual disability, autism and associated psychiatric disorders, alongside domestic partner violence and its effects on mental health. Frances Anderson is an independent translator. Born in Scotland in 1950, she graduated from Glasgow University and then moved to Italy. She has translated a number of books including Mirrors in the Brain (Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia, 2008), The Empathic Screen (Gallese and Guerra, 2020), Mirroring Brains (Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia, 2023).