Franco Basaglia: biography of this Italian psychiatrist and activist.

Biography of this psychiatrist and promoter of the struggle for the rights of psychiatric patients.

It was not so long ago that psychiatric centers were dark places, isolated from the rest of society, where people whose mental disorder was a nuisance for "normal" people were locked up.

Victims of often inhumane treatment, psychiatric patients had the life of a prisoner, whose opinion and well-being was hardly taken into account and who did not consider the possibility that their psychological discomfort was the result of a dysfunctional life.

Fortunately, this changed with the political and social activism of a psychiatrist named Franco Basaglia, who not only denounced the unfair treatment of patients but also contributed to legal changes to provide them with better treatment. Let's discover his story through a biography of Franco Basaglia a biography by Franco Basaglia.

Short biography of Franco Basaglia

Franco Basaglia is one of the key figures of the movement against the hospitalization and internment of psychiatric patients. This Italian psychiatrist opposed the dehumanizing treatment of people with mental disorders in asylums and brought about a new approach to psychiatric treatment. and brought about a new approach to the care of these patients, bringing about a great revolution not only in his native country but also in many developed countries.

Franco Basaglia is considered one of the fathers of "anti-psychiatry" along with Ronald D. Laing and David G. Cooper, although not in a derogatory sense towards the discipline of psychiatry but against the methods and treatments used in its more traditional side. Basaglia did not see mental disorders as purely medical illnesses, but as the result of some kind of social dysfunction that had led the patient to suffer from a disorder and end up hospitalized.

Basaglia was a prolific scientist, writer and humanist as well as a tireless activist. Thanks to his fight for the rights of psychiatric patients, he succeeded in getting Italy to implement a new law that initiated a more ethical and effective treatment of mental disorders.

Early years and professional training

Franco Basaglia was born in Venice, Italy, on March 11, 1924.. He was the second of three children of a wealthy family and grew up in the San Polo district of Venice, the same district where he attended high school. His childhood was a quiet one, typical of a family of means in pre-war Italy.

In 1943, at the age of 19, he entered the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Padova.. His years as a university student were spent in an Italy at war, marked by the development of the Second World War.

Active in the anti-fascist underground movement, Basaglia was arrested in 1944 when he was denounced by a fellow student. He did not receive a fair trial and imprisoned until the end of Benito Mussolini's Italy in 1945.. His time in prison greatly influenced his stance on the illegitimacy of compulsory confinement and deprivation of liberty as forms of psychiatric "treatment".

In 1950 he worked in the psychiatric clinic of the University of Padua. A little later, in 1952, he obtained his degree of specialization in "nervous and mental diseases", a merit that would be the equivalent of a psychiatrist's degree. In 1953 he married Franca Ongaro, with whom he would enjoy a long marriage that would give him two children: Enrico and Alberta.

In 1958 Franco Basaglia became a professor at the University of Padua but, just three years later, he left the academy and moved to Gorizia, right on the border with the former Yugoslavia. He arrived there to take over the direction of the local psychiatric hospital, where he discovered the sad and harsh reality faced by psychiatric patients, whose treatment, though not identical, was not identical to that of his own. whose treatment, though not identical, resembled that which he himself had received as a political prisoner during Fascist Italy.

By that time Basaglia already had his own idea about mental disorders. Unlike what most psychiatrists of the time considered, Basaglia refused to accept that these were physical illnesses but rather a consequence of social injustices, marginalization and dysfunctional environments. His first speech at the hospital where he was committed is remembered to this day, being a true reflection of his views on the treatment of psychiatric patients:

"A person with a mental illness enters the asylum as a 'person' to become a 'thing' there. The patient, first of all, is a 'person' and as such must be considered and cared for (...) And we are here to forget that we are psychiatrists and to remember that we are people."

Democratic psychiatry

In August 1971 Basaglia took over the direction of the psychiatric hospital San Giovanni of Triestea few kilometers from Gorizia. For the municipality, this hospital was the place where all individuals who did not fit into society ended up and, since they were not considered to be useful people or adapted to social life, they were a nuisance. The best thing to do was to keep them apart from the rest of the "normal" people?

Faced with this situation, Basaglia, far from accepting what the center was doing with the patients, initiated a process of change both inside and outside the hospital. In 1973 Franco Basaglia founded the "Democratic Psychiatry" movement, dedicated not only to intellectual and theoretical production and the development of public health models, but also focused on political conquest with the aim of closing psychiatric institutions and achieving a more humane treatment of patients with mental disorders.

Basaglia considered that psychiatric institutions were centers that could not be reformed and, therefore, needed to be completely destroyed.He was a pioneer in the field of psychiatry, restoring freedom to patients and designing a new system of psychotherapeutic support. His revolutionary ideas in the field of psychiatry gained the support of many professionals, governments, institutions and associations that saw the need to stop treating psychiatric patients as people who were not going to contribute to the community and take them for what they were, people.

Among the activities that had been developed at the San Giovanni during its depsychiatrization process, the "artistic laboratory" stands out, in which both inmates and people from the community, neighbors, students and hospital staff participated under the direction of the plastic artist Vittorio Basaglia, Franco Basaglia's cousin.

It was during the sessions of this laboratory that a huge papier-mâché horse was built whose belly was filled with the wishes of the patients. They called this monument "Marco Cavallo" and with it they stormed the hospital of San Giovanni, tearing down its walls in a march through the city where Franco Basaglia and the patients demanded the definitive closure of the center. This event, still remembered by Triestine residents, became a symbol of the anti-psychiatric movement.

This movement succeeded in 1977 in closing the San Giovanni hospital. Shortly after, on May 13, 1978, Basaglia's political activism reached the Italian parliament, where the law 180which completely reformed the management of psychiatry and prohibited the confinement of psychiatric patients against their will. The issue was to turn the asylums, which were places that were remote and marginalized from social dynamics, into centers that would help their inmates effectively reintegrate into society.

Franco Basaglia created an open hospital system, in which the inmates of the center could go out into the street and interact with the rest of society instead of remaining isolated from it. At the same time, many patients were able to return home. Basaglia, always interested in the opinions, wishes and feelings of his patients, organized assemblies within the hospital, organized assemblies within the hospital to find out what the inmates thought and to look for alternatives that were the result of a consensus among all the patients..

This clashed with the ideas of those who defended the existence of asylums, advocates of intervention in isolated and totally controlled environments. The same people who believed that all inmates were there because they were not and would not be able to live in society.

International impact and final years

In 1980 the hospital in Trieste was totally different from what it was. The old services and procedures had been replaced by cheaper, more efficient and, very importantly, more humane ones. Although Basaglia had left the management of this facility and gone to Rome to assume the position of regional coordinator of psychiatric services in the Lazio region, his influence on that facility and many others in Italy was profound.

The old asylum was replaced by 40 different services, and the idea of forced confinement was almost completely abandoned.. The new approach used new resources and tools, including home care. Acute cases were treated in apartments where small groups of patients were brought together and received psychosocial rehabilitation.

Franco Basaglia died on August 29, 1980 at his home in Venice when he was still quite young, only 56 years old.. The cause of his death was a brain tumor that developed rapidly and only two months after his diagnosis led to his death. His mortal remains rest in his hometown, in the cemetery of San Michele.

His death did not mean the end of the influence of his ideas, since to this day he continues to have a great impact on psychiatry at an international level. Some have even compared him to Nicolaus Copernicus, who realized that neither the Earth nor man was the center of the Universe. In Basaglia's case the situation is paradoxical, since he came to say that, although we were not the center of the universe, no one deserved to be belittled and separated from society because of their mental condition.

Law 180 of 1978

Franco Basaglia's struggle for the freedom of psychiatric patients acquired a strong political character that became a real social movement. Basaglia sought precise legal changes and made his struggle become part of the ideology of the Italian left. Law 180, which today is known as "Basaglia's law", was passed in May 1978, marking a turning point in the treatment of psychiatric patients in the country.

The Italian law 180 is the first legal text in the world to recognize and establish the rights of people with mental disorders.. Four decades after its approval and despite several controversies, this law is still in force in Italy. The changes introduced by this law not only initiated a process of dehopitalization of patients with mental disorders, but also led to an improvement in the treatment and recovery of people with psychiatric disorders.

It is a direct consequence of this law that Italy is the developed country with the lowest number of hospital beds per inhabitant for psychiatric disorders. Italy is also the country with the highest number of social intervention centers, with state support in their financing and the participation of the patients themselves in their management.

The Basaglia law stipulates the gradual and sustained closure of psychiatric hospitals and prohibits the construction of new ones.and prohibits the construction of new psychiatric hospitals. This law has been successfully implemented, especially in the first twenty years in which more than 90,000 psychiatric beds were eliminated. This same text provides for the opening of small departments for hospitalization within general hospitals, as well as the offer of shelters or other centers for people who are not able to live alone.

The public service maintains the duty to guarantee mental health care to those who require it, although patients have the right to refuse it, since the Basaglia law establishes that all treatment must be therapeutic and voluntary. This does not mean that there are no forced hospitalization in some exceptions, but in case they occur, they are strictly delimited and are considered borderline situations, in which the patient's life is in danger in the short term.