Non Tacitur

The Psychiatric Hospital, also called an Mental Hospital, is the structure that welcomed patients with a serious psychiatric pathology. The Psychiatric Hospitals over time have become real places of torture for patients and, if necessary, imprisonment for people who are inconvenient to politics.

The “Leonardo Bianchi” Psychiatric Hospital of Naples could accommodate up to 1,600 patients and were kept in very bad sanitary conditions. The rooms smelled of excrement, the mattresses were greasy with urine, some patients were kept naked, often huddled on the ground. Although the “Leonardo Bianchi” was a hospital, among the medical staff there was a prison language and most of them were violent with the sick so often that to settle the patients’ crises they would come to tie them to the beds. The mental hospitals were a big business on the shoulders of the sick, the fees for maintenance were expensive but the food was poor.

With the Italian law No. 180 of May 13, 1978, the Basaglia Law, due to the name of the author, it was decided to close the mental hospitals in Italy. The “Leonardo Bianchi” was closed only on 22 November 2002, just before closing, around 20 million euros were disbursed for an alleged restructuring.