Yvonne Bonner

Email: y.bonner@re.nettuno.it
yvonne.dilys@gmail.com

Yvonne Dilys Bradlaugh Bonner has been working as psychologist, psychotherapist and sociologist in Mental Health in Italy. First in Milan , then in Reggio Emilia in the National Health System. In her current position, she is responsible for the planning and organization of the continuous education of the personnel of the Mental Health Department of the Local Health Unit in Reggio Emilia. The Mental Health Department comprises four services: Child and Adolescent Mental Health, Mental Health (for adults), Clinical and Community Psychology and Drug Addition.

She also works as psychotherapist and trainer. Yvonne has helped to close the psychiatric hospital in Reggio Emilia and also mainstreamed, for more than twenty years, disabled children in schools. Subsequently she directed for fifteen years a Regional School for social educators. After this experience, Yvonne worked as co-ordinator and tutor in Master Courses on Health and Social Strategic Planning programmed by the University of Bologna and today by the University of Modena Reggio . Moreover, she was chosen by the General Manager of our Health Unit – to be one of a team of nine professionals – that trained the 3500 health workers of the Local Health Unit in a Total Quality Management.

Yvonne has taught and still teaches, as visiting lecturer (psychology, psychosocial methodology and women studies in the universities of Metz (France), Bolzano, Bologna, Modena Reggio and San Marino ) and as trainer in many health, social or voluntary agencies in northern and central Italy .

Thanks to her knowledge of languages,  Yvonne has worked with European, American and Australian colleagues as trainer, student, or participant in international conferences or research projects (i.e. work integration for mentally disabled persons; violence in psychiatry, appreciative inquiry, etc) and thus has developed a competence in planning and running courses in different cultural backgrounds.

Yvonne’s commitment to work in connection with women and multicultural populations brought her to teach gender studies at university and train social and health professionals on issues of multicultural care.  She is one of the members of the Editorial board of the oldest psychiatric review in Italy “Rivista Sperimentale di Freniatria” (first published in 1875).