Omceo Roma takes the field to tackle youth addictions
Doctors, institutions and sports champions united against drugs, alcohol and gambling addiction
ROME – ‘Youth addictions: dimensions of the phenomenon and prevention strategies for a correct lifestyle. The Order of Doctors of Rome takes to the field’. This is the title of the conference organized today by the Capital’s Omceo in the ‘Roberto Lala’ Hall. The event, which received the patronage of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, brought together doctors, institutions, sports champions, young people, family members and representatives of the Diocese of Rome.
Promoted by the Capitoline Order the meeting was born with the aim of analyzing the current dimensions of the phenomenon of addictions to substances of abuse and not only, such as alcohol, drugs and gambling addiction , highlighting their impact on the national health system. At the same time, the conference aimed to evaluate the often serious disorders that affect the mental health of adolescents, disclosing the resulting consequences both for them and for their families, for the social environment that surrounds them and also taking into consideration addictions to social media and the internet, which are significantly and progressively increasing.
Doing the honours, after the screening of an emotional video, was the president of Omceo Roma, Antonio Magi. ‘Today – he explained – is the first step that concerns all addictions. We started with the so-called ‘soft’ drugs which, as we saw during the conference, are not light, but in addition to this we will set in motion a similar activity each time regarding the use of alcohol, of smoking, for gambling addictions, up to the use of devices by children in an abnormal manner. It is those addictions that put children’s health at risk and we as the Medical Association must highlight them as a subsidiary body of the State.
The president of the Italian Medicines Agency, Robert Giovanni Nisticò, also took part in the conference. ‘Certainly – he was keen to point out – addictions are a very complex phenomenon, because they are disorders categorized by the DSM, the diagnostic and statistical manual on mental disorders, and they have two fundamental components: the genetic one , genetic vulnerability, and the environmental component. It is very important to combat these phenomena, especially in very early stages.
The words of the number one of the >Aifa ferried the participants to the scientific part of the conference. Another host is the vice-president of the Order of Doctors of Rome, Stefano De Lillo, coordinator of the Commission for the study and prevention of addictions of the Omceo of the Capital.
‘The Order of doctors of Rome – De Lillo specified – reaffirmed the importance of specific and scientific training and information in the field of drugs. We want to train first and foremost doctors, paediatricians, general practitioners, psychiatrists, emergency room doctors, those who are on the front line dealing with these new addictions, the drugs that the industry of deathproduces every day with increasingly dangerous news’.
‘We also want to create correct information in the country which starts from sports centres, schools, oratories and which involves the whole of Italy, not seeing drugs as a partisan issue but a shared issue. We – he reiterated – believe that drugs are a truly dangerous problem for our society on which we must, from a scientific point of view, all agree, have a single consensus. There is no light heart attack, there is a heart attack, there is no light cancer, there is cancer, there is no light drug, there is a drug‘.
After the speeches of the director of the Department of Mental Health of the ASL Roma 1, Giuseppe Ducci, of Giuseppe Bersani, full professor Fondazione Sapienza Roma and of the health and scientific director of the Villa Von Siebenthal psychiatric hospital, Sergio De Filippis, it was the turn of the president of the association Ets Observatory of Addiction, Alessandro Vento: ‘Cannabis – the psychiatrist warned – is still considered a light drug despite having a very high concentration of active ingredients such as THC’.
Focusing on the ‘peer education’, i.e. peer education, Vento then turned the spotlight on the ‘intervention protocol in schools: let’s carry out ‘peer education’ campaigns, i.e. the transfer of information on these issues through the message that same students convey to other students in laboratories. The students prepare workshops together with the whole class group which are presented in a plenary session which gives emphasis, importance and also return in terms of effectiveness and self-esteem to the children involved.
The scientific part then left room for the voices of those who have touched the problem of addictions closely< /strong>. Some very exciting testimonies from family members of young people with substance problems and from young people who have concluded their therapeutic journey favorably.
To move those present was another emotional video, which introduced the experiences of girls and boys and the story of Carlotta Mattiello, mother of Vittorio Andrei, aka ‘Cranio Randagio’, a young 21-year-old rapper who died in November 2016 from cardiac arrest due to a mix of drugs and psychotropic drugs.
The head of the structure of the Comunità Incontro di Amelia, Giampaolo Nicolasi, declared that he hosts young people who ‘already from he age of 16 have devastated their lives and their families. Very young kids who are in the care of health services because they are involved in the drug tunnel. After the substances they begin to use substitute drugs, consequently their life if it is not treated, if it is not followed by doctors from a clinical point of view becomes devastating for them and for their families.
The participants then listened to the words of some representatives of the Diocese of Rome, active in offering help to young people to overcome their hardships. Among them the Auxiliary Bishop of Rome, Delegate of the Episcopal Council for the problems of young people, Monsignor Michele Di Tolve. ‘There is no neighborhood in the city of Rome – he announced – where there is not a parish, an oratory, a sports group, educators. This is the first way, being among people across all people’s living conditions, from children to young people and teenagers. The people who suffer, the sick, those who die. The parish, first of all, is present like this but then it is present because it wants to offer itself precisely to help.
The curtain was brought down on the conference by the president of the Higher Institute of Health (ISS), Rocco Bellantone. ‘The Institute – he recalled – has a constant, continuous and long-standing commitment to the problem of addictions, both to substances and to behaviour. In particular, I would like to point out the close collaboration with the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, with the Anti-Drug Department, for a study that is carefully monitoring the spoiled habits especially of our adolescents in this field’.
‘Then – he added – I underline the presence of the Toll Free Telephone that the Institute has dedicated to these problems and I underline the importance of all the observation that the Institute dedicates to this topic with an important alarm signal for the institutions that must intervene’.
At the end of the day’s work the Omceo Rome Commission presented the proposals for the convocation of an institutional and multidisciplinary technical table involving representatives of the Ministries of Health, Education and Merit, Sport and Justice.
“The results obtained in this year and a half, almost two, of work – highlighted the scientific director of the Commission for the study and prevention of addictions of the Order of Doctors-Surgeons and Dentists from the Province of Rome, Antonio Bolognese– are the basis for being able to think about spreading this initiative of ours on a national level, involving the medical associations of most Italian cities< /strong>.I believe that the possibility of exporting a method that has given such significant results could be of interest to institutions”.