We receive and publish a speech by Gisella Trincas, president of the Sardinian association for the implementation of psychiatric reform and national president of Unasam – the national union of mental health associations.
That pavilion was the “second Women” of theformer asylum of Cagliari. It was renovated together with all the pavilions of the asylum and, in September 2007, it was inaugurated. It was supposed to house the first mental health center in the Sardinia region open 24 hours a daythe seat of the Department of Mental Health and the headquarters ofAsarp (the Sardinian Association for the implementation of the psychiatric reform) on free loan for 5 years, renewable. For us and for those who had invited and urged us to transfer our regional headquarters to that pavilion (considering it an added value in the activity of the public mental health service), it meant renewable without problems. We had problems as soon as the political framework of the regional government changed (but this story – which we live cyclically in many – I’ve already told). Today I would like to convey to you what the expulsion of the Association from those spaces has actually meant in recent days.
The first big problem was finding hospitality immediately, somewhere, given the difficulty in finding a suitable alternative home (after 36 years of intense social activity). They met us Cobasmaking their room available to us, just so as not to interrupt relations with the world and the minimum administrative activity necessary for the fulfillment of all the bureaucratic procedures that regulate the activity of a recognized organization registered in the Single national register of the third sectorand continue to carry out the events and projects already planned.
We had to activate a transport company that emptied the premises where we were no longer welcome, made us beautiful, welcoming, full of human warmth and crossed by the many stories we welcomed and accompanied. Emptied our rooms of furniture, equipment, archives, the library and the documentation center (precious material for students and undergraduates), paintings, plants. All boxed and sealed, to be transferred to a warehouse while waiting for better times.
This morning we arranged that small but precious room and gave the task of arranging and equipping a small internal courtyard as an aggregative space in which, as far as possible, to welcome family members, people using mental health services, friends and supporters. . With immense pain, we had to suspend the cultural workshops, the self-help groups, the web radio activity, the assemblies, the daily and constant consultancy offered to anyone who came to our office, the consultancy and coordination of the support administrators of the Association, the direct and daily relationship with the operators of the territorial mental health service, the relationship with the network of organizations in the regional territory, the welcome of anyone passing through our spaces where you breathed the “air of home”. This obviously also entails the slowdown of all our activity, having to select priorities from now on (because we don’t have all our work tools at our disposal), considering the spaces available.
It was a hard blow, we can’t deny it: us we see it as a serious political act against an Association that has always put the fundamental rights of the human person at the center of its work without any fear, claiming full recognition (in compliance with our Constitution and the Health Reform Law No. 833). This meant and means opposing all the political and administrative choices that these rights do not protect, and which have led to the impoverishment of the human and financial resources necessary for mental health services. One of the reasons given by Local Health Authority 8 (the one for which the Court accepted the appeal and determined the release of those premises) was that, the occupation of those spaces (four rooms and a corridor – a minimum portion of a large pavilion which has so many spaces available), prevented the implementation of the Essential levels of assistance and therefore caused damage to the users of the services. A service which has a very serious personnel problem, which does not have financial resources dedicated to individual recovery projects, which also struggles to guarantee the presence of operators throughout the area of competence and whose main activity is periodic visits and treatment pharmacological.
In the opening photo, one of the renovated buildings of the former asylum in Cagliari