In April 2015 Italian judicial psychiatric hospitals were closed. All over the country the REMS (Residences for the Execution of Security Measures) had to face many questions which the founding law (No 81 of 30 May 2014) had left unanswered: how to regulate their presence in the territory, while abiding by the "last resort" rule; how to handle aggressive and/or socially dangerous patients now admitted to strictly health-care facilities; how to deal with people suffering from various, at times very different psychiatric disorders now experiencing cohabitation. The foreseeable, initial precariousness produced anxiety, fear and great tensions in our REMS: we tried to interpret these feelings from the personnel’s point of view while also considering the issue of health care professionals’ total empowerment and subsequent reduction in the sense of responsibility. However, these tensions also offered a chance to try and solve the many contradictions that have long characterized the Italian mental health-care system.
Keywords: Socially dangerous patients, "Last Resort" Rule, Group, Empowerment, Fatigue, Solving contradictions.