That link between mental health and spirituality - Corriere Fiorentino

CONFERENCE

That
link between mental health and spirituality

the first meeting related to two issues. In the opening greeting of Cardinal Betori

Into the first of its kind in Italy and will see experts and internationally renowned speakers at the same table to discuss Spiritualit, mental health and disability. The conference organized by the Fondazione Onlus with Oda Florence Tuscany for APPC on June 7, at the auditorium of Santo Stefano al Ponte, has a very rich program of activities, which will be open from greeting the Cardinal Archbishop Giuseppe Betori. For the occasion will be presented unpublished documents, such as the one promoted by the president of the Medici of Florence Antonio Panti, which invites all doctors to respect for spirituality in clinical practice with the document Ethics and enhancement of spirituality.

Among the speakers will also Gwendolyn Malvezzi, the coordinator for the Ark of the International Federation Italy and Spain, which will bring the greetings of Jean Vanier, philosopher and philanthropist internationally renowned founder of L’Arche (The Ark). Together with her an audience of specialists in the Catholic world (as Veronica Amata Donatello, Office of Catechesis CEI) and the medical world (like the psychiatrist Stefano Pallanti, director of the School of Specialization in Psychiatry of the University of Florence and Peter Verhagen President of the World Psychiatric Association-Religion, Spirituality and Psychiatry section). What is the relation c ‘between mental health and spiritual life? How to ensure the expression of the spiritual life of the disabled person and not? These and other issues before in Italy very little depth, try to answer the experts gathered in the auditorium of St. Stephen’s Square, which will delve int o important issues such as the relationship between medical ethics and spirituality and the link between mental health and spiritual life.

Together with Cardinal Giuseppe Betori , Archbishop of Florence, will bring their greetings also representatives of the City and Region and President of the Foundation Oda, Can. Vasco Giuliani. The conference was organized by the Fondazione Opera Diocesan Assistance Florence Onlus, on the occasion of the IV Congress of Psychologists and Psychiatrists Catholics of Tuscany. The Foundation operates in Florence rehabilitation services for the disabled. The directors of the structures – Dr. Marco Campigli for the structure of Diacceto and Dr. Giovanna Sorrentino to that of Florence – Speakers at the conference, introduced by Dr. Stefano Lassi, psychiatrist, specialist in charge of the center of the APPC Diacceto and Vice-Tuscany, an association that with its President Daniele Mugnaini, involved for some time in reaffirming the importance of “evidence-based” in determining the religious and spiritual meaning and hope, and psychological health and quality of life, and recommending the enhancement and full respect of this dimension in the clinical-therapeutic, but also in other areas such as the psychology of work.

The disabled person, even when it is wound in the mind or in his capacity sensory and intellectual, with all the limitations and sufferings which marked, obliges us to interrogate with care and respect the mystery of the man who in every situation of life maintains its dignity and its value as a child of God – says the president of the Foundation Oda, Don Vasco Giuliani – why even the intellectual disability must be facilitated to participate, as far as possible, the life of the society and be helped to implement all its potentialities of physical, psychological and spiritual. The event is sponsored by the Tuscany Region and the City of Florence and was made in collaboration with Caritas of the Archdiocese of Florence and Florence Onlus.