Therapeutic communities for drug-addicted mothers and their children. | Comunidades terapéuticas para madres drogadictas con hijos.

The research reviews the Italian experience of therapeutic communities of drug-addicted mother with children, which have been in operation in several Italian regions since 1995. In particular, it makes a more in-depth study of 8 of these communities in northern Italy where there is more information available and where direct observations have been possible. The community can be totally professional, religious or mixed. The theoretical orientation of the professionals is generally of a psychodynamic kind. There is normally a combination of group and individual therapies. The average stay of mothers is generally two years. The experience seems to be positive for the mother and the child but there are no follow-up studies. Problems arise when the therapy ends and it is time for reinsertion in society since, on occasion, they find it difficult to leave the residential system, which they have idealised, so that some communities have developed intermediate structures that facilitate the separation and the departure from the therapeutic community.