Service of clinical psychology for Padua University's employees

Ten years ago the University of Padua decided to organize a clinical psychology service for all employees and their families with the aim to prevent tensions and conflicts: in 1999 two tragic events had taken place in a very short time inside our buildings: the murder of his father, a University professor, by his son, researcher and, a few days after, some shots by an employee during a meeting, which caused the immediate death of a technician and of a professor, the permanent disability of an administrative employee, and another professor’s coma that lasted 4 years till death. Alberto Mazzocco, Director of DPSS (Social and Developmental Psychology Department), and Vincenzo Milanesi, a philosopher, that within a year became the Rector of our University, were immediately aware that such events were severe symptoms of personal and institutional distress and disease, for the place where they happened and the violence that perhaps could, if not avoided, at least be limited, on the basis of the murderers‘ previous behaviors. So, they started this service and asked the clinicians of the Faculty of Psychology, to work in it. The service is supposed to answer to different manifestations of psychic difficulties (individual, relational, in the family and at work) but it is also aimed to prevent general distress. No doubt that those tragic events were symptoms of diffused psychic difficulties also if individually the murders were the possible consequences of an ignored illness. The most common diseases referred to us were at the beginning: personal dissatisfaction, anxiety and depression, psychosomatic symptoms and/or poor mental and physical balance with the emergence of functional disorders (frequent headaches, migraines, gastritis, etc.), almost always related with a worsening of family and social relationships associated with a bad quality of individual life.