**3. Method**

The Mental Health treating team performs the referral to the sport activity with different objectives as to promote health and physical well-being, to motivate social participation and prevent isolation, to have recurring weekly activity, and to socialize or to promote specific personal and relational skills or social integration.

The technical aspects of training are supervised by professional coaches provided by UISP, while the weekly organization and conduction of sports activities, initiated by psychiatric workers and conducted by them for over 10 years, are since 3 years assigned to a user with specific training as a social facilitator, who is always present. The facilitator is a user who has achieved a good level of clinical stabilization and who is perceived by other users as an ally, able to understand their feelings, because he too has had experiences. At the same time, he is the referee of fairness of play in the field and guarantees the respect of sporting rules; he acts as a mediator among the athletes and acts as a liaison between them and the MHD staff.

The psychiatric worker, belonging to the MHD semi-residential rehabilitation center, collaborates with the social facilitator for the implementation of sports activities and works together with the caring team when admitting the new users/athletes; she supervises and maintains links with MHD and regional sports groups. Facilitator and psychiatric worker together reinforce the results obtained with the sports, promote self-esteem, create the conditions allowing everyone to feel at ease and find a role in the activities. They closely cooperate in the organization and coordination of activities, as required by a specific protocol of collaboration.

Sports activities as part of a therapeutic rehabilitation project are currently four: at an individual level, gymnastics and swimming in the pool, and as a team, volleyball and football (5 or 11 players). To these activities take part weekly about 50 people, males and females, aged between 20 and 64 years, with different psychiatric disorders; schizophrenia represents more than half of the diagnoses. Many users/athletes practice currently more than one activity.

All sports are practiced at least once a week; in addition to this, we organize and take part to social events and regional sport meeting. At least once a month, the volleyball and soccer teams play against teams of high schools, as part of a project aiming to educate young people and fight stigma. Sport activities are subject to either external observation—by professional coaches, psychiatric worker and facilitator—and self-observation by athletes themselves. In team sports, the end of a session of training is often followed by a time of reflection, informal but very effective, where the team group examines the progress achieved and any difficulties encountered, and programs the next workout or the participation in tournaments.

To gather more information, the point of view of users athletes has been audited in 2016 with individual interviews and using the World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL) brief schedule, 26 items [5], to get information about the perceived level of quality of life.
