An exhibition and protest march to implement UN and WHO provisions on mental health
With the patronage of the Municipality, the exhibition ‘Beyond the Asylum’ returns to Florence, in the historic venue of the Duomo Auditorium of the CCHR; Citizens Committee on Human Rights, a voluntary organization that exercises oversight in the field of mental health. With the opportunity, a peaceful march will also be heldwith departure and arrival in Piazza Santa Maria Novella passing through the city center for protest against psychiatric abuse and the presentation of two books as part of the exhibition.
In the 70s Franco’s innovative ideas Basaglia gave rise to a movement of reform, but the law that was supposed to implement it transferred responsibilities from mental hospitals to hospitals without however overcoming the mental hospital logic made up of forced treatments, restraint, threats, bars, prolonged sedation and deprivation of the most fundamental human rights. In an interview given to the newspaper “La Stampa” Basaglia himself reiterated his opposition to the TSO and prophesied “the danger of special departments and the perpetuation of a segregating and marginalizing vision.”
Also the work of the Florentine doctor Giorgio Antonucciwhich he successfully experimented with in the Imola mental hospital non-psychiatric and non-violent methods for treating mental distress (no forced hospitalization, no restraints, no psychotropic drugs), was hindered, and soon forgotten: today Italy is sensationally non-compliant with the UN and WHO recommendations for non-coercive psychiatry that respects human rights.
The organizers’ choice to title the exhibition “Beyond the Asylum – Psychiatry and Human Rights” is therefore significant. This cultural initiative explores not only the past history of psychiatry, passing through the Nazi concentration camps and the Soviet gulags, with panels dedicated to lobotomies, electroshock and psychotropic drugs up to the modern trends dictated by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the WHO for a mental health that renounces coercion and infinite sedation and adopts a sociotherapeutic perspective based on respect for human rights.
This year the exhibition has been improved with the integration of a photographic exhibition in 15 totems depicting the situation in the so-called residual mental hospitals; the structures remained open after the reform in 1978 and closed only about twenty years later following the diffusion of these photos in national newspapers and television networks.
Special events as part of the “Beyond the asylum” exhibition:
-5 April, 5.00 pm: inauguration of the exhibition with the participation of representative guests.
-6 April, 4pm: protest march for the SIRS (International Society for Schizophrenia Research) congress and delivery of an open letter with which the CCHR asks SIRS to act immediately to implement the UN/WHO recommendations. Departure and arrival in Piazza Santa Maria Novella.
-7 April, 5.00 pm: presentation of the book Pathogenesi Psichiatrica by Giulio Murero. The doctor Giulio Murero presents his work criticizing the very foundations of organic psychiatry.
-8 April, 5pm: presentation of the book “Beyond the mental hospital”. The doctor and Honorary President of the CCDU presents a historical recovery of the photos taken in the first half of the 90s during the surprise inspections carried out by the CCDU in the remaining mental asylums, photos which are part of the 15 totems added to the exhibition.
