Z Houses. Nuovi servizi dedicati ai giovani nel Dipartimento Dipendenze della ASL Napoli2Nord

Abstract

The study focuses on the characteristics of the Generation Z – that is, young people born from 2000 to today. These are digital natives, who own various devices and use them for several hours per day. Social communication is fast, iconic, changeable. Social media are used not only to exchange content, but also to structure emotional relationships and to abreact tensions and emotions. These young people were born into mononuclear families. They no longer recognize the normative authority of the father and family of origin. They are much more susceptible to social influences. The peer group is chosen to confer identity, as a vehicle for experiencing. Experience, multiple, often extreme or dangerous, is the main tool for growth, having supplanted learning by means of legislation and symbolism. These guys are notoriously distant from the current Public Addiction Services. They perceive them as old and inadequate. They don’t represent themselves as addicts, they don’t understand why they should be healed, or what they should be healed from. Furthermore, they perceive the current operators, with their specialist training, as useless to their hunger for experience. As a result of these anthropological and technological changes, the Author puts forward a series of reflections on the changes to be made in the Addiction Services – in order to become attractive for these young abusers – and gives as an example the Youth Services programmed in the Addiction Department Pathologies of the Napoli2Nord ASL, from the Z. House to the Ser.D. Web.