Associazione Onlus CONTATTO

The Contact Onlus Association for the promotion of Natural Social Networks was established in May 2004 by the will of a group of operators in the mental health area who have been engaged since 1999 in the creation of an innovative experience of treatment and rehabilitation within of the Department of Mental Health and Addiction of the ASST "Grande Ospedale Metropolitano Niguarda" in Milan. This experience, called the "Natural Social Networks Programme" was aimed at people suffering from mental illness with the aim of improving their quality of life and promoting their social integration.

The decision to give life to the Association derived from the matured awareness that the public mental health services, responsible for taking charge of mental illness, had difficulty responding alone to all the needs of their users while they could provide a more complete and effective through networking with external resources and, in the first place, with the users' natural social networks (fourth sector). The desire of the operators to combine their institutional mandate with the implementation of initiatives in favor of the culture of solidarity and social commitment in order to facilitate the therapeutic-rehabilitative paths of citizens suffering from mental illness has meant that the activity of the Association over time declined in some specific areas of intervention.