A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria: Stella maris - AS IF IT WAS A NORMAL THING (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

While waiting for the next hearing scheduled for May 14th, we made some 
reflections on the progress of the trial that we have been following for 
about a year. We took some time to put our ideas back together, after 
having attended yet another hearing (to be clear, that of last Tuesday 
12 March) of the trial on the mistreatment of children with disabilities 
hosted in the Montalto di Fauglia facility (Pisa) of the Stella Maris. 
Once the interrogation of the operators was finished, it was the turn of 
the doctors, Paola Salvadori (who was interviewed during the previous 
hearing) and Patrizia Masoni.

Masoni's words are the ones that made us reflect the most. For their 
content, of course. But, perhaps, even more so, for the claim of 
neutrality, of naturalness with which they were pronounced. Dr. Masoni, 
psychiatrist and head of the IRM (the Rehabilitation Institute, the 
other structure dependent on Stella Maris, next to the residential 
structure), declared that in Montalto di Fauglia, in the event of a 
crisis among the guests, the so-called "containment mats". As if it were 
a normal thing, in fact, the doctor reiterated and better specified one 
of the darkest points that had already emerged from the testimonies of 
other operators. When any of the guests became particularly irascible 
and unmanageable, the card of storage mat.

In the sad logic of restraint, which has justified and still justifies 
methods, violent and disrespectful of human dignity, of inhibition, 
immobilization, even very prolonged deprivation of the use of the body 
(ropes, straitjackets, straps, belts, closed rooms under lock and key, 
pharmacological restraint), the mistreatment affair at Stella Maris 
manages to gain a very respectable place. The restraining mat works in a 
simple and somewhat predictable way: the patient is immobilized and 
rolled up in the mat.

At the Fauglia garrison, the doctor reminds us, the idea of the 
containment mat began to take hold after an unidentified American doctor 
had recommended its use during a study conference, extolling its 
undeniable practical effects and the fact that "this type of patient 
does not like physical contact" (again in the words of the doctor, 
quoted literally here). The other, far from acceptable, reason in favor 
of the containment mat indicated by the American doctor was that the mat 
would allow for fewer problems with families in the event of a patient's 
crisis. Dr. Masoni stated verbatim: «the doctor told us: but don't you 
in Italy have problems with insurance when your patients get hurt or 
return home with bruises? With us the carpet avoids many of these 
problems...". And so, in the years 2008-2009, listening to the words of 
this doctor and presumably without ascertaining their veracity and the 
actual possibility of practicing a similar restraint in Italy, the 
doctors of Stella Maris also began to use it in the facility, even if 
only in 2014 did the Tuscany Region include it among the accredited 
containment tools. This is always according to the words of Dr. Masoni: 
but, at the moment, we are not aware that this method has ever been 
accredited by anyone, much less by the Tuscany Region. Among other 
things, accreditations should, in any case, pass through the local 
health units.

In the meantime, the structure was making a virtue of necessity. At the 
beginning the operators - according to the doctor's story - made do with 
what was available: they brought carpets from home! Only after some time 
would a further investment have been possible: the doctor said that she, 
accompanied by other operators, would have personally gone to Ikea to 
stock up on low-priced carpets, as she stated. And we are talking about 
an institute - Stella Maris - which receives millions of euros from the 
Tuscany Region every year.

A further question concerns the number of people who should have used 
this Ikea-sized storage mat. In the testimonies presented at the trial 
before March 12, some operators and Dr. Salvadori herself (director of 
the Healthcare Residence for the Disabled in Montalto where the 
mistreatment took place) had spoken of the need for five people to be 
able to use it: one for each limb plus one for the head. . And precisely 
this provision would many times have prevented the use of the carpet due 
to staff shortages. Doctor Masoni's story continues, however, with other 
details that describe an (if possible) even worse reality, completing a 
shocking picture. The doctor, in fact, maintained that in reality a 
single operator would have been enough to use the carpet, and precisely 
to facilitate an intervention of this type they had thought of adding 
"handles" to the carpet, so as to hold it as if with a net the 
recalcitrant person from fishing to subsequently proceed with the 
rolling up procedure. Last but not least: in the absence of the staff 
required to carry out the containment maneuver using the carpet, the 
workers would have prevented a possible "unrolling" of the unfortunate 
victim several times by placing a chair as a "stop" on the rolled up 
carpet on which then, to complete the work , they would sit down. 
Something that was told by other operators during the trial.

From our point of view, this is really too much. We still have our eyes 
offended by the images that appeared two years ago on the court screen, 
which irrefutably testified to the - more than alleged... - beatings 
aimed at the guests of the facility. We have heard the insults - very 
serious - repeated to the same people only for the sake of crushing, 
subjugating and annihilating personalities.

This further background horrifies us and at the same time pushes us to 
formulate some - necessary - considerations.

In our opinion, the use of containment mats poses some problems on two 
levels of reflection. On the one hand, the juridical-legal level: how is 
it possible that a cruel and crude device of this type can be considered 
regular? We are not aware that carpets are accredited health aids like 
other, cruel, annihilating and equally unacceptable restraint 
instruments used far and wide in almost all psychiatric "reception and 
treatment" facilities, such as belts for example. And even if they had 
been legitimized in some way by some internal protocol, we doubt that 
the carpets brought from home or bought at Ikea could be considered 
regular and accredited. From this point of view, the judge and/or 
lawyers of the civil party should perhaps look into the matter further 
to detect any further crime profiles.

But what strikes us most, beyond the doctor's accommodating words, is a 
second aspect of the question, the implications of which we would like 
to be well understood.

You can't roll human beings up in a carpet. People don't bond. Never.

There are no reasons that can justify such violence: even more so in an 
institution of (alleged) excellence responsible for "welcome" and 
"care"; even more so towards people, defenseless children in need of 
nothing other than inhuman and degrading treatments. The outrage towards 
the bodies forced by ropes and restraint mats, annihilated by 
psychotropic drugs, segregated and dehumanised in those healthcare 
facilities which continue to be total institutions, constitute the 
«acted denial» (to put it in the words of Professor Alfredo Verde, 
drafter of the technical report for the civil component of the Pisa 
trial) than what is stated in the Service Charter of the Montalto di 
Fauglia unit, which states that the model adopted <<first of all puts 
the patient as a person at the centre, in his individuality , in his 
relational and personal needs[...]. Our philosophy of intervention is to 
'take care' as well as cure[...]. Our organization is centered on the 
model of the small group of patients led by professional educators and 
assistants with educational functions, who act as auxiliary 'I' or 
'adult companions' of the patients, who support them concretely and 
psychologically in every act of daily life .[...]every boy[...]is seen 
as a bearer of affections, emotional needs, aspirations, skills.

The supposed excellence of Stella Maris is a big bluff. In Fauglia, no 
therapeutic treatments or treatments were carried out, but rather 
violence and degrading and humiliating treatments against the guests. 
Beyond procedures, protocols and guidelines, which can offer a legal and 
professional imprimatur to the need, whatever the cost, to reduce a 
person to impotence, all restraint practices, including restraint mats, 
represent, as well as unacceptable violence, one of the many symbols of 
the failure of the psychiatric utopia.

Antonin Artaud Antipsychiatry Collective
via San Lorenzo 38, 56100 Pisa
antipsichiatriapisa@inventati.org
www.artaudpisa.noblogs.org 3357002669

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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