Throughout the world, people with psychosocial disabilities are frequently exposed to
human rights violations, such as discrimination and exclusion from society, inability to
access health services, physical, sexual and psychological abuse, violence, neglect and
denial of the right to legal capacity.
Another obstacle to access to care, to social inclusion and which encourages violations
of the human rights of people with psychosocial disabilities is represented by the stigma
and discrimination it entails.
Furthermore, caregivers themselves can also be the recipients of stigma, and previous
research suggests it affects more than half of them.
This stigmatization represents a real burden, especially in emotional terms, for
caregivers and can reduce access to support, resources and opportunities in the social
sphere with an impact that also has repercussions on the person with psychosocial
disabilities for whom they take care. treatment.
The importance of providing positive support to caregivers in their supporting role
emerges; an increasingly broad evidence base underlines the benefits of caregiver
involvement on the well-being of their family member, in particular it is associated with
an improvement in the quality of life, a reduction in symptoms, the risk of relapses and
hospital admissions.
In this context, Internet-based interventions can be a useful tool to increase the
knowledge of caregivers of people with psychosocial disabilities and to reduce the
physical and psychological consequences resulting from burden and stigma.
The implementation of a mental health human rights literacy intervention among caregivers
is of crucial importance in the current context. This type of initiative aims to provide
caregivers with the knowledge and skills needed to understand, respect, defend and
promote the human rights of people with psychosocial disabilities and can help caregivers
identify situations where the rights of people with psychosocial disabilities could be
violated. Such action can contribute to the empowerment of caregivers and people with
mental health conditions and can help combat the stigma and discrimination associated
with mental disorders.
The specific objective of the research is to conduct a randomized controlled trial in
Italy to evaluate the effectiveness of the World Health Organization QualityRights
training compared to a control intervention (another online training program) in
improving human rights knowledge and caregivers' attitudes towards people with
psychosocial disabilities as rights holders.