Film Screening and Discussion: The State of Madness

Despite a March 2015 law ordering their closure, six “criminal asylums” detain some 1,500 people in Italy. These institutions confine people for life, cage them in cells, tie them to beds, and dehumanize them with pharmacological mistreatment. They remained largely impervious to outside influence and reform, and were not subject to the 1978 “Basaglia law” that closed psychiatric hospitals and mandated their replacement with community-based services.

The documentary Lo Stato della Follia (The State of Madness) is a first-person account of Luigi Rigoni, formerly interned in one of these asylums, intertwined with scenes of official inspections by the National Health Service and the voices of current inmates. The film exposes the neglect and degradation of the facilities, the mistreatment of inmates, and the deprivation of the most basic rights to health care for people with mental illness.

Speakers

• Francesco Cordio is an actor and filmmaker. Both his 2010 documentary on judiciary psychiatric hospitals and his 2013 documentary, Lo Stato della Follia, garnered various awards, including special mentions at the 2010 and 2013 Ilaria Alpi Awards.
• John Trainor is chair of the advisory board of the Open Society Mental Health Initiative, sits on the advisory board of the Open Society Public Health Program, and was formerly the director of the Community Support and Research Unit at the Center for Addiction.
• John Maher is editor in chief of the Journal of Ethics in Mental Health, president of the Ontario ACT Association (OAA), chair of the Ontario ACT Psychiatrist Group, and chair of the OAA Technical Advisory Committee.