Franco Basaglia will be very happy with what he has done in life and he will be very happy with me, for what I have done and for what I am doing in my life. Yesterday, it was March 8th, Women’s Day, and in the morning I went to the Maddalena Mental Health Center to have the injection which, due to my mental disorder, I have to do monthly. I entered through an open door, stayed there for some time and then left through that same door, which for me and for many other “crazy people” like me is always open. I was lucky to have experienced my “madness” accompanied today in a path of recovery and empowerment for thirty years, in a path of care and kind attention towards me by the mental health services of Trieste.
I enter the CSM Maddalena, an operator kindly greets me, having had a strong worry that distressed me, I talk about it to an operator who I find in reception, he kindly and with the utmost attention listens to me and gives me the necessary support. Pietro, the director of the CSM, passes by me, sees that I am talking to the operator, brings his hand closer to mine, greeting me and shakes it slightly, a sign of a certain equality and complicity. For me this is all Franco Basaglia who lives and manifests himself here in Trieste, in my reference CSM.
After giving the injection I happily walk out that door and go down to the city. Outside there is my full life waiting for me: there is my house, my husband and my son, work meetings, cinema and theatre, work, the organization of cultural initiatives in the city to promote Slovenian culture , in summer there is the Barcola seafront which awaits me peacefully and where I go to swim and tan, in winter and autumn there are long walks on my beloved shores. This is a full life for me and for this I am infinitely grateful to Franco Basaglia and to all those, operators, who follow Basaglia’s approach, humane, kind and respectful of the dignity of mad people, because we “mad people” are citizens too and citizens with rights like all other citizens.