Democratic Psychiatry is Italian society and movement for liberation of the ill from segregation in mental hospitals by pushing for the Italian psychiatric reform

Italian psychiatric reform

Psychiatric reform in Italy is the reform of psychiatry which started in Italy after the passing of Basaglia Law in 1978 and terminated with the very end of the Italian state mental hospital system in 1998.- Aims :...

. The movement was political in nature but not antipsychiatric

Anti-psychiatry

Anti-psychiatry is a configuration of groups and theoretical constructs that emerged in the 1960s, and questioned the fundamental assumptions and practices of psychiatry, such as its claim that it achieves universal, scientific objectivity. Its igniting influences were Michel Foucault, R.D. Laing,...

 in the sense in which this term is used in the Anglo-Saxon world. Democratic Psychiatry called for radical changes in the practice and theory of psychiatry and strongly attacked the way society managed mental illness. The movement was essential in the birth of the reform law

Basaglia Law

Basaglia Law is the Italian Mental Health Act of 1978 which signified a large reform of the psychiatric system in Italy, contained directives for the closing down of all psychiatric hospitals and led to their gradual replacement with a whole range of community-based services, including settings...

 of 1978.

Organizing committee

Democratic Psychiatry was created by a group of left-orientated psychiatrists, sociologists and social workers under direction of Franco Basaglia

Franco Basaglia

Franco Basaglia was an Italian psychiatrist and neurologist, professor who proposed the dismantling of psychiatric hospitals, pioneer of the modern concept of mental health, Italian psychiatry reformer, charismatic leader in Italian psychiatry, figurehead and founder of Democratic...

who was its figurehead. An organizing committee, which constituted in Bologna

Bologna

Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...

 the first nucleus group called Democratic Psychiatry, consisted of Franca Basaglia, Franco Basaglia

Franco Basaglia

Franco Basaglia was an Italian psychiatrist and neurologist, professor who proposed the dismantling of psychiatric hospitals, pioneer of the modern concept of mental health, Italian psychiatry reformer, charismatic leader in Italian psychiatry, figurehead and founder of Democratic...

, Domenico Casagrande, Franco di Cecco, Tullio Fragiacomo, Vieri Marzi, Gian Franco Minguzzi, Piera Piatti, Agostino Pirella, Michele Risso, Lucio Schittar, Antonio Slavich.

Directive committee

The 2010 National Congress of Democratic Psychiatry in Romе elected the new directive committee consisted of national secretary Emilio Lupo, national president Luigi Attenasio, honorary president Agostino Pirella, national treasurer Maurizio Caiazzo.

Approach

Basaglia and his followers deemed that psychiatry was used as the provider of scientific support for social control to the existing establishment. The ensuing standards of deviance and normality brought about repressive views of discrete social groups. This approach was nonmedical and pointed out the role of mental hospitals in the control and medicalization of deviant behaviors and social problems. According to A. Giannelli, at least in the beginning Democratic Psychiatry used phenomenological and existential ideas as its ideological and cultural reference point. However, according to P. Fusar-Poli with coauthors, Democratic Psychiatry was culturally grounded on Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci was an Italian writer, politician, political philosopher, and linguist. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime...

’s theory of “revolutionary reform” and Foucault

Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...

’s critique of the “medical model”.

Objectives

The objectives of the association were (and still are) to pool together professional initiatives and energies in any part of society which are aimed at closing mental hospitals and restoring the rights of psychiatric patients.

Programme

The programme of Democratic Psychiatry stated in Bologna on the 8 of October 1973 included the following proposals:

1. To continue to fight against exclusion, by analysing and rejecting its sources in the social structure (the social relations of production) and in the superstructures (norms and values) of our society.
2. To continue the struggle against the “asylum” as the place where exclusion finds its most obvious and violent expression, as well as the practical means of reproducing the mechanisms of social marginalization.
3. To underline the dangers of reproducing segregating institutional structures, even in the mental health services created outside the hospital.
4. To make explicit, in a practical way, the link between acting in the specific psychiatric field and the more general problem of medical care, by demanding a unified action (beyond the division of labour and skills) which in the specific struggle for the promotion of mental health involves us in the broadest possible struggle for a concrete and necessary health reform based on, and expressing, a new social logic.

History

In 1977, Democratic Psychiatry helped the Radical Party, a political organization principally concerned with the human rights defense, to collect together three-quarter of a million signatories to a petition to improve the mental health law and thus to prohibit hospitalization to psychiatric hospitals. According to Italian law this petition could have resulted in a national referendum on the issue. To avoid a referendum which could have forced the government to resign, the government passed Law 180 in May 1978 and thus initiated the dismantling of the psychiatric hospitals.