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/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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