Dear friends, dear friends
we hope to meet again in many. Keeping up for a group of enthusiasts like us is not easy. Things happen that distract us from the declared intentions of attention to the Forum. Here in Trieste, but also in many other places, we find it hard to resist the neglect and sometimes the ideological fury of those who administer us. However, six months have not passed in vain. The APS Mental Health Forum Association was born and we would like to talk about this with more detail and information at the next assembly. It was necessary for a provisional Board of Directors to be formed and at the X Assembly we will have to elect the definitive CD.
The Draft Law which we have spoken of several times (see www.forumsalutementale.it) was deposited by the Hon. Serracchiani and by sen. Sensi and will be presented to the press on Tuesday 27 June at 4.00 pm in Rome. Some of us will be present, but if others reading would like to participate, let us know.
In this assembly we will get to know the bill better and talk about it. The theme will be introduced by Luigi Benevelli, Pietro Pellegrini and Daniele Piccione. Luigi will take stock of the current situation of mental health policies in parliament, while Pietro and Daniele have taken on the task of entering into the merits of the Magi law and the Serracchiani/Sensi law. Asking for the abolition of the psychiatric report and reviewing salient parts of the code (as in the Magi bill) can only be placed in a parallel path that wants to give stronger legs to the mental health departments.
Recent events, Barbara’s death in Pisa, have given rise to violent criticism and words that we thought were buried by now. The dangerousness of the “mentally ill” was evoked as a certain and unequivocal fact, like a lock pick to reduce the precious achievements of fifty years of work to rubble: the mentally ill are dangerous, they are incomprehensible and incurable. Law 180 has become the origin and cause of the insecurity that seems to have invaded every moment of our daily lives. Some psychiatrists have been noted for the rudeness and vulgarity of the comments shouted and taken up by the media. Almost by everyone. As always happens, the following week the clamor had already subsided and a letter to “daily health” from the president of the SIP (published on the pages of the Forum) seems to propose some way out, highlighting what has happened over the fifty years that have changed our way of experiencing mental illness and also of meeting the other. Yet we had never experienced such difficult, hateful, hostile times.
We have little to expect from this government. Perhaps in such unusual circumstances we will be able to meet, to share, to rediscover the common belonging. The opposition parties will have to commit themselves to supporting a desire for consolidation, to seek the ethical and human dimension that seems to have largely abandoned the places of care. Just as the many good practices that manage to happen with difficulty appear precious, so it has become painful and intolerable to see and know about practices increasingly marked by abandonment, by the stupid organization of services, by the ever more invasive presence of “residences”, by the loss of a pó everywhere of the culture and gestures of hospitality (and not only in diagnosis and treatment services). Not to mention the mandatory medical treatment which in its implementation, misinterpreted, translates into violent and harmful practices not only of rights but above all of people’s possibilities of treatment and recovery. In too many places the Tso has moved away from the idea with which this measure was born, it should never have been oppression, coercion, annihilation. Rather an embrace, a listening, a look that can only pass through comparison, mediation, exhausting negotiation. Not to mention that without realizing it we have seen the NHS reach its death throes. The impoverishment of local services and especially of mental health networks make the bet we are trying to make truly heroic.
Much, and very badly, there has been talk of the psychiatry/justice relationship, of misunderstandings if not conflicts between the various stations in the area that have to welcome people with mental disorders and who have committed a crime. Many magistrates and with them many regional administrations are convinced that the Rems are nothing more than the place that replaces the Opg in all respects. The safety measure must invite the mental health departments, the judiciary, the social services, to coordinate with each other to build the delicate treatment project that takes into account the need for social protection. After the first careful and curious practices, the magistrates have resumed sending an ever-increasing number of people to the execution of the security measure in the Rems (still thinking of the insane offenders). Territorial service organizations in their fragility can do nothing but submit. Hence a request to increase seats in the Rems. Again where do I put it and not what we do.
Marco Cavallo continues to run. From Iesi he arrived in Brescia, Turin, Naples, bringing the words of the Forum everywhere. Everywhere the friends who welcome him write to us and convince themselves, and we with them, that the horse is the story of liberation on its way. A story that can never end. In a few days, on June 24, he will be in Rome and will march at the head of the great national demonstration of the CGIL and at least 50 associations to try to launch a strenuous defense of the National Health Service.
ANSWER
Introduced by Carla Ferrari Aggradi and followed by Luigi Benevelli “mental health disappears in the new parliament”; Pietro Pellegrini “a radical proposal”; Daniele Piccione “vitality of a law”.
The Mental Health Forum
IX Assembly
Monday 26 June, 18.00
On the Zoom platform
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