Ricerc@Sapienza

The phenomenon of homeless people is eliciting a devastating social impact with an estimated prevalence in the USA and in Europe between 5.6% and 13.9%. These persons have a poor quality of life, a limited or no social life. They are often unemployed or work only occasionally. They are at risk for problems with the law and often suffering from addiction to other drugs, psychiatric and other medical diseases. Alcohol is often not the cause of their social status, but only the result of other discomforts thus contributing to their bio-psycho-social degradation.

Background. Clinical practice of mental health services changed in 1978 after the Basaglia Law was passed, and it is now characterized by usually voluntary treatments offered by community-based services. That broadened the interventions' focus from the single subject to their environment. Dual diagnosis is defined by WHO as «the co-occurrence in the same individual of a psychoactive substance use disorder and another psychiatric disorder». It is considered to be a "border territory" since entails networking between different medical services. Materials and methods.

Alcohol use disorders (AUD) are among the most common and undertreated
mental disorders in developed countries. The co-occurrence
of psychiatric comorbidity and AUD has already been well documented.
Moreover, alexithymia was found associated with heavy drinking
and alcohol dependence. A large part of AUD individuals, between
45 and 67%, have been identified as alexithymics. Both psychiatric
comorbidity and alexithymia can negatively impact the course of
recovery from alcohol. Alcohol consumption has also been shown to