In the brain of the Extraordinary Commissioner for Missing Persons, where the cases of disappearances in Italy are inserted, the name of Imperia appears several times. According to the statistics that have brought the province to the fifth last place overall in terms of safety, the fact that it is the one where there is the greatest number of under 18s who move away from home: 67 per thousand minors. Imperia (107th) shares the dramatic primacy in the order with Trieste (106th), Udine (105th) and Crotone (104th). The reasons behind these disappearances are various: adolescents fleeing their families due to family distress, disappointment with school performance, drug use, cyberbullying, blackmail or sexual extortion. Added to these are abductions by family members or other types of disappearances (violence, abuse, neglect) including accidental events.
But how can this striking fact be recomposed with the image of a happy island that Imperia had conquered? Lara Volpe, clinical psychologist specialized in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, immerses herself in the analysis: “Since the data speak of 67.6 / 1000 reports of disappearances in our province against 14/1000 of the national average and this occurs despite the fact that numerous positions in the field of culture and leisure time and in the quality of life of young people (which includes parameters such as outdoor sports areas, concerts, discos, average age of the first child), it is necessary to look for possible critical areas towards the social climate “.
Dr. Lara Volpe continues in her lucid examination: “From my clinical experience with minors, the perception of excessive social control often emerges among the causes of malaise due to the fact that ours are small towns in which one has the feeling that everyone know everything about everyone. I would like to say that, in reality like Imperia, the famous sociological theory of the 6 degrees of separation, according to which each person can be connected to any other through a chain of knowledge and relationships with no more than 5 intermediaries, becomes the theory of the 3 or even 2 degrees of separation. Furthermore, the discomforts of identity, belonging, self-affirmation could rest on a social situation in which economic resources are concentrated and people have the perception of less and less autonomy, depending on the “powerful” and the “usual suspects” who hold money but above all control. On the other hand, one of the basic needs of young people is to be able to have confidence in their own resources in order to build their own future. And then, paraphrasing Biswanger, an existentialist psychiatrist, it could be said that “if the ascent cannot come to an end, it turns over into disappearance” ».