In Rome, demand for mental health support is a real public health challenge. Across the wider Lazio region, a significant number of adults are already followed by public specialist mental health services, a clear sign of how much psychological and psychiatric care is needed locally, and mental health remains just as essential to overall wellbeing as physical health.
For many migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, or people living in conditions of marginality, getting that care is far from straightforward. Language and cultural barriers, socioeconomic vulnerability and traumatic experiences all stand between them and the mental health support they need, making timely, specialised transcultural pathways genuinely necessary rather than a nice-to-have.
The project
Psyché runs through Centro Psyché, offering specialist transcultural mental health pathways designed to reach people that standard services often miss. Care is delivered by a multidisciplinary team, a doctor, psychologists, linguistic-cultural mediators and psychosocial professionals working together, combining individual psychotherapy, psychosocial support and group activities around each person's own needs.
The aim is genuine access to care: reducing the risk that untreated distress becomes chronic, and easing its wider impact on a person's overall health. Throughout, the project keeps the person at the centre of every decision, promoting autonomy and wellbeing while staying closely integrated with the wider network of local health and social services.
Who the project is for
The project's direct beneficiaries are 70 people: migrants, asylum seekers, refugees, women who have survived gender-based violence, and other vulnerable people taken into individual psychotherapy, psychosocial support and group activities.
Its impact reaches further, to around 250 people, including families, social networks and the local services involved in each person's wider path of care and inclusion.
Project name: Psyché – Un centro per la salute mentale transculturale
Proposing organisation: MEDU - Medici per i Diritti Umani ETS
Area of intervention: Health & Welfare
Country: Italy