There are associations that are born to carry out objectives of promotion and social redemption, motivated by skills that you want to put in place, dormant passions, cultural and political ideals. But when the push comes from the heart for a painful personal experience, then the perspective from which to look at it is completely different. He knows very well Livia Nuccio that the association he has presided over since 1994, theItalian families association for suicide prevention (Afipres)named it after his son Marco, who died at the age of 23, deciding to spend his whole life for those who, due to depression, see suicide as the only way forward.
«Marco was a young violinist who suffered from a form of depression for which he took drugs that gave him tremors – she herself says -, not allowing him to hold his beloved violin in his hand. An emotional lack towards his instrument that day after day has become unbearable, so much so that he decides to take his own life. Back then, depression was not treated with psychotherapy, but with drugs that had devastating consequences».
Marco’s future was announced, a first violin with a special mention for musicality from the Teatro Santa Cecilia in Palermo.
«The immense pain felt for what happened made me find my emotional response first of all in faith. Then I resolved not to hate youth, asking on his coffin that it wasn’t a sterile death, that it had meaning, giving me the opportunity to realize for others what I hadn’t been able to do for him. In moments like this you want to embrace death too, but I had to go further».
It was in 1994, therefore a year after Marco’s death, that Afipres was born, immediately activating the Yellow telephonea listening center which, at the number 800.011.110offers listening and support to eventually direct to the most suitable treatments.
«Of course I would like to do even more – adds the president of Afipres – because, when you take care of fragility, you become part of dark worlds. A heavy commitment also because today there is a tendency to do social enterprise which, speaking of our sector, for me means exploiting and selling one’s pain. Instead, compared to my experience, volunteering has meant and means giving what I have not been able to understand and offering to my son and to other children, to other young people».
A necessary service that, during the Covid, has been implemented in consideration of a moment that has revolutionized everyone’s life, imposing new rhythms of life to go to the supermarket, to the pharmacy, take the dog off, the only possible activities for those who could. The lockdown period was particularly complicated for those who, under conditions in which freedom of movement was limited, also added a previous personal discomfort.
From this consideration, in fact, arises thePsychological clinic online that the “Afipres Marco Saura” has activated, through the number 340.0552032, so as not to make those whom Covid was threatening to cancel, especially in spirit, feel alone. Service that has never stopped working, even for all the people that the association’s volunteers welcome in the headquarters of Cruillas, a suburb of the city of Palermo halfway between the ring road and the roads that climb and cross the mountainous municipalities of the Palermo hinterland. A district that is not exactly a dormitory, but far from the city centre, therefore devoid of public meeting places that allow the youngest to meet in protected spaces. Thanks, however, to realities like Afipreswith its creative, musical and animation workshops, young people manage to avoid the road and lower the levels of stress that generate discomfort and psychic fragility, a prelude to self-harming and suicidal behaviour.
«I wondered how the people who met in our headquarters before Covid could do – she explains Viviana Cutaia, psychotherapist of the association – and for which we were a certainty. We were pioneers because, until then, there wasn’t a service that could activate a connection with people, other than the classic phone call. Even online they managed to create a welcoming dimension as if we were in the same room. Only the screen separated us. We were right because there were about a thousand requests and we are continuing to help people overcome the fear that won’t go away».
An average age of 40 that of those who turned to the Psychological clinic onlinecalling by expressing in a broad and shared way a state of anguish for something that escaped common understanding
«In fact, I thought that it would be more the young and the elderly who contacted us – adds Cutaia -, but I explained it to myself with the fact that the forty-year-olds are the ones who first suffered the repercussions of the pandemic. The consequences for the youth are coming now with the anger they are taking out. Consequences also of a phenomenon like that of the Hikikomori, on which we should reflect well. For us, the intervention we are carrying out is framed in a path aimed at the well-being of the person. In fact, we were delighted by the proposal, which we immediately accepted, to create a “popular neighborhood psychotherapy clinic” which we are sure in Cruillas will make a difference».