Who We Are
WFMH Board Candidates for Election
2025-2027
Roberto Mezzina
Country: Italy
Region: Europe
Nominator: Silvia Raggi
Candidate 1000 word statement
I am psychiatrist and psychotherapist, activist, expert and advocate of human rights, researcher and trainer, with academic experiences. I am also expert of deinstitutionalization, destigmatization and community mental health, including forensic and bioethics.
I currently advocate for human rights and citizenship of people with mental health problems in my work as volunteer (Comunità Sant’Egidio, DONK, and other NGOs for migrants and vulnerable people), and in conferences, training courses for professionals and stakeholders, schools and public events, mass media and social media, in Italy and all over the world.
I joined the WFMH as member in 1987 and attended the World Congress in Cairo, and then the World Congress in Lahti (1997). I adhered to the International Mental Health Network developed by John Jenkins in 1995 within the framework of WFMH. I established, with him and the leaders of other 5 European best practices in the field of community mental health, the International Mental Health Collaborating Network (IMHCN), under the aegis of WHO Geneva. I brought the IMHCN again within the WFMH, and it became a voting member organization in 2019; and I also opened the section on Community Mental Health Development with this organization.
I have been involved in the field of mental health for about 47 years, working as psychiatrist in the Trieste experience, with the first closure of a psychiatric hospital in Europe in 1977, while re-stablishing freedom and rights of patients. Trieste became a city with no asylum 45 years ago, with an open door and no restraint system, to foster recovery and social inclusion in the community, while embracing a human rights and person centered approach. The Mental Health Department became a WHO Collaborating Centre in 1987, as it was considered a model for rights based and person centered services (WHO, 2021).
I worked in Trieste after my graduation from 1979 on and I spent the next 40 years developing community services as a comprehensive alternative to the mental hospital. For 30 years I was Director of a comprehensive, 24-hour Community Mental Health Centre; I became Director of the whole Department in 2012 and Head of World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Research and Training from 2009 on, till my retirement in 2019.
In this role I have been aimed at supporting deinstitutionalization and development of community-based services worldwide. I was consultant of National Governments for reform policies (UK, Denmark, Czech Republic, Australia, New Zealand, Poland, Serbia, France, Palestine among others). My professional experience and scientific production (about 250 papers and 3 books) includes deinstitutionalization, organization of community services, crisis intervention, integrated approach to the therapy of psychosis, community care, rehabilitation, recovery, user involvement, human rights, research and epidemiology, epistemology, critical forensic psychiatry. I have been invited as teacher, keynote speaker and expert in hundreds of conferences and courses by Scientific Institutes, Universities, Mental Health Services in Italy, Europe and overseas.
I have been prized for Innovative Practice as regards to article 19 of CRPD by Zero Project at UN in Vienna, 2014; in September 2017 I received the prestigious “European Personality Award” by Gamian Europe. I have been a WHO advisor for the new World Mental Health Report, the WHO QualityRights Programme; the European TAG for Mental Health Impacts of Covid-19. I am also member of the WHO Euro Coalition. In all these projects I brought the voice of the World Federation for Mental Health.
I have been nominated by WFMH as VP for Europe in November 2019. Since then, I tried to re-launch the WFMH region in term of memberships and affiliations. I have contributed to the WMHD 2020 and 2021 educational packages and to an appeal for national reforms after the pandemic with IMHCN. I have also worked for an International Action Plan with a coalition of other organizations.
I was nominated as Vice President for Programme Development in 2021, and in this role I was coordinator of the Community Mental Health Section the Global Summit on Mental Health in Rome, 13-14 October 2022.
I have been again nominated by WFMH as VP for Europe for the current Board in 2023. I represented WFMH in international congresses and events, and as WHO / UN Reps, collaborating with the WHO for the forthcoming Guidelines on Deinstitutionalization; I promoted mental health reforms worldwide in the name of the WFMH, e.g. presenting at PAHO on Brazilian Reform, May 2023; at the Conference of Confederacion Salud Mental Espana, May 2023; in Chennai, India, in July 2025 and in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in November 2024, aimed at establishing East-West connections. I was nominated external expert by the EU Joint Action on community mental health reform ‘ImpleMental’ (2023-25), attending meetings in Cologne, Milan, Athens. In my role as STC at the World Bank, in March-May 2024, I prepared a discussion paper on ‘Innovations in Mental Health Service Delivery’ (issued January 2025), as WFMH VP.
I have proposed the forthcoming conference co-sponsored by WFMH in Gorizia / Nova Gorica (Italy and Slovenia), as joint European Capital of Culture, on ‘Basaglia beyond the borders / Prectices of Freedom’, 12-14 November 2025). I am member of the Organizing Committee for the World Congress of WFMH in Barcelos (2025).
In short, my aims are:
- Widening the impact nationally and globally of the WFMH especially in the area of empowerment of stakeholders and human rights
- Strengthening the collaboration with WHO and its programs and initiatives
- Promote a more active role of members, especially those with lived experience, and member organizations
- Strengthening the advocacy role of the WFMH as far as human rights, MH equality and social justice are concerned
- Supporting reforms in the spirit of WFMH advocacy policy, the practice of deinstitutionalization and its link with community / recovery based MH care
- Improving the internal collaboration within the WFMH and its members and member organizations, the EC and the Board of WFMH.
Candidate additional statement if provided