Health and Illness

Mental Asylum

Since of the beginning of 20th century the local administration was determined to create a new mental asylum. Several hyphotesis were examined and it was established to locate a new centre in a hilly area just out of the town. The architect entrusted to the design and the building of this hospice was Ludovico Braidotti (Gorizia 1865 - Trieste 1939), an important character in the political and social life of the time in both towns. In fact he had already built schools and the asylum in Gorizia. This architect exemined and decided the location of the various buildings inside the area which was really huge (the perimeter walls measure more than 2.5 kilometers) and the green and forested area inside because also chronic invalids were accomodated in one of the cottages. This hospital organization was run in a very strict way up to the beginning of 1970s when the psychiatric Franco Basaglia (Venezia 1924 - Padova 1980 ) became responsable for the asylum in Trieste. He had already worked at the mental hospital in Gorizia where he had started to the reorganization of the former structure.

His revolution was actually carried out in our hospital where he started new therapies and reorganized the departments. At that time the number of mental patients was 1182; he opened the doors and disbanded the strict control they were undergoing, organizing the patients in groups sharing the same controlled structure and locating them in the city itself. Besides he started with the organization of cooperatives of about 50-60 former patients who were employed in cleaning services. They run also their own kitchens providing food for the hospital and a school outside. Everybody signed the union workers' contract and this act marked the end of ergotherapy.

One of the old buildings in the Asylum area

Since 1972 Basaglia devoted himself to the work on territory with the aims of discharging hospitalized patients and their supporting at home.
Five years later the number of patients was only 132 whose 81 volunteers. It was activated a voluntary service of psychiatric watch in the central hospital (Ospedale Maggiore). Then this assistance center was transformed and others have been created on the territory and made responsible, round-the-clock, for thr mental problems of local population. The positive results of these experiments were recognized by the international scientific community and a national law was passed in 1978 which marked the end of locked asylums and revolutionized all aspects of mental disease assistance network.
Presently the number of patients hospitalized is 90 and 12 groups are sharing their lives in autonomous flats with different levels of medical assistance.
The opening of mental asylums has brought in our opinion notable improvement in the life of mentally disturbed people because these new therapies were not only based on medicines but also on the partecipation of these ill people to the everyday life inside the town. Sometimes the behaviour of these lunatic people might seem strange and disturbing, but for the majority it was a real achievement.