About Us
Established in 1999 in Rimini, Cittadinanza is an Italian association that develops and supports, together with the World Health Organization (WHO), psychiatric rehabilitation and psychosocial projects in low income countries.
Cittadinanza operates with a public health approach and with the aim of promoting and defending the rights of those persons with mental disorders and their families.
Stigma, prejudices, shame and exclusion hit millions of mentally ill persons and their families in almost all the countries of the world, but especially in developing countries, in areas of dire poverty, where mental illness is often considered not a real pathology but a weakness, a punishment for immoral behaviour or ‘damnation’ from bad spirits. Even when recognized as a pathology, the assistance received is poor, inadequate and often inhuman, leading to isolation and abandonment.
Here we are speaking of those who are entirely neglected and forgotten!
Mental disorders are about the double in poor countries than in rich countries, but they rank quite low in the list of priorities of national health policies, which address mainly diseases with a high mortality rate.
Cittadinanza has therefore chosen to intervene in the mental health sectors of low income countries at both health and social level. Its interventions are thus focusing not only on treatment and rehabilitation but also on social reintegration of people with mental disabilities into their own communities.
