In the field of psychiatry, Italy, as other Western countries, developed practices and research on psychiatric diagnosis, drug efficacy with reduced sideeffects and finally on psychotherapy. Italy was less interested in building tools and methods to assess the levels of psychiatric disability and it’s devastating consequences on mentally ill persons. Recent progress in psychiatric rehabilitation - field of study that analyses the consequences of mental disorders, rather than the disease - has greatly contributed to the understanding of the impact of mental illness on people’s lives, restricted not only by impairments, but also by dysfunctions, disabilities and handicaps. The rehabilitation paradigm frames the assessment of the patient’s functioning and the diagnosis of it’s social competences.
Keywords: Dysfunction, disability, social competence diagnosis, assessment of functioning