Luca Negrogno
Department of Economics and Political Society, University of Urbino, I
Keywords:
Mental Health Services, Community Care, Welfare , ‘Psy’ Knowledge
Abstract
The purpose of this essay is to analyze the role of ‘psy’ knowledges in the changeover of mental health services. These welfare services are shifting into paradigm of ‘community care’ and reshaping the role of users’ and professionals’ knowledges, as we can see in the participation of mental health services users in providing relief and support. The first part of the essay concentrates on the case of Irina, a user of neuropsychiatric service for childhood and adolescence I work for in a high school as a ‘tutor for social integration’. In the second part of the essay I will analyze this process with tools from the sociology of expertise and intervention. The ethnographic study of this case will show a deep contradiction between the declared ‘opening’ of community care services to user’s knowledges and the real gap of power that yet regulates the structure and the meaning of social intervention.
