Commentary to “Lobbying for Endorsement of Community Psychology in Australia”

The struggle to have community psychology endorsed as one of the recognized psychological specialization among the health professions could not happen in Italy in quite the same form, since in our country the most prestigious professions (doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers etc.) are regulated through “professional orders” , which are instituted through specific laws passed in Parliament. University graduates aspiring to practice one of these “legalized” professions must pass a special examination (similar to the bar exam for lawyers in the United States) to become members of the professional order. Different professions can create scientific or professional associations, which have less prestige and power than professional orders. In fact, many requests by professional associations to become an order often remain in the form of proposed laws for years in the Italian parliament. In Italy, a big battle, which required most of the same lobbying described by our Australian colleagues, actually took place in the seventies and eighties to obtain the passage of this kind of law.