Boom in requests for help for mental health problems among young people. 34% of SOS calls sent to Soss, the support, orientation and social assistance service offered by the Don Luigi Di Liegro Foundation, come from young people under 30. It records “over 50 calls per month in total, equally divided between men and women, of which more than a third are girls and boys who have turned to the service due to a hardship to submit a request for help. Numbers doubled and constantly growing compared to the same period in 2023”, reports the foundation, announcing that Soss will also remain active in August.
“The callers – reports Luigina Di Liegro, secretary of the organization – are mostly family members and friends, worried about someone, complaining about the lack of activities promoted for those affected by a specific pathology and who often find themselves at home alone, without direct contact with mental health centers. The increase in requests for help from under 30s must push institutions and anyone who deals with mental health to open a privileged channel for them. We need to invest more in a network of psychosocial services for families”, urges Di Liegro.
Requests for help to the SOSS – the foundation reports – come from all over the country, with a strong prevalence of the Capital and its province, equal to 70% of the total. The numbers rise slightly in the more peripheral areas of Rome. Users ask for support in accessing services, report social and mental distress, episodes of bullying, anorexia, bulimia and depression, difficulties in relationships with the family or at school. Only a small percentage is made up of the homeless (0.4%) or those who ask for information regarding problems related to specific diseases, such as Alzheimer’s.
The Soss service of the Di Liegro Foundation – as stated in a note – will remain active throughout the month of August, in order to guarantee support in a particularly delicate period of the year for people suffering from mental health problems and their families, and can be contacted from all over Italy by calling the number 3517488351 or by emailing [email protected].
The virtual counter is just one of the services offered by the foundation, also in the field with socio-rehabilitation workshops (music, theater, photography, creative writing, art) for users followed by public facilities in Rome, the self-help group for family members, the self-help group for bereavement support, the multi-family group. The organization is also active with prevention interventions in schools, conferences and seminars on the topic of mental health and a specific training course for volunteers and family members that has just started, with the participation of more than 200 members from all over Italy. The Di Liegro Foundation is committed every day to strengthening orientation and awareness services on mental health, also thanks to the tools made available by the Comunità Solidali 2022 call for proposals by the Lazio Region – Department of Social Policies, Welfare, Common Goods and ASP.
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