The Psychiatric Reform in Italy: Summing Up and Looking Ahead

Any assessment of how far the Italian psychiatric reform has been implemented and its future prospects cannot ignore the socio-politico context in which the law was drafted, its relationship to the necessary change that the law implied, and the chances of the reform being allowed to be implemented in the present socio-political context. Law 180 matured over a fifteen-year period and was spurred on by experiences already underway in various parts of the country. These experiences had shown the practical possibility of