Pandemic aside, mental disorders in Italy they are steadily increasing, year after year. Yet the stigmatization of people with psychiatric problems it does not decrease. The Italian situation is nothing short of disastrous: the shortage of personnel amounts to a deficit of 9,000 operators; the state funds allocated correspond to 3.5% of the total expenditure of the national health service, compared to 6 million people with psychiatric disorders or at risk of anxious or depressive disorders (Istat data).
“At the base of all this there is a huge cultural problem that affects public and political opinion. I am convinced that mental health should be talked about everywhere as something that is natural to take care of in terms of well-being and prevention “, she says. Stefania Buonifounder of COMIPacronym for Children of mentally ill parentsthe first Italian association created by and for i children of parents with mental disorders.
Stefania was born in Rome in 1980, where she graduated in Communication Sciences at the La Sapienza University and then moved to Viterbo’s Tuscia. “During my teenage years both my parents developed severe mental health problems, first my mother and then my father as well. Most likely the difficulties in the family already existed since I was a child, but in the absence of a culture that reserves the same attention to mental health as physical health, accompanied by a great stigma, the signals were not intercepted in time “.
In addition, in the 90s, when a Stefania still a child begins to realize something is wrong, psychotherapy was a luxury for a few. It was not common to turn to a professional in the sector for a pain of the soul, rather than the body. Stefania’s adolescence is marked by the need to obtain awareness and help, but the times are not yet ready to welcome something that is not spoken about. “Both of my parents have experienced extremely difficult situations in their families of origin. These stress factors, never adequately resolved, have resulted in greater and greater discomforts, until they become a real disease to be treated in the clinic. Unfortunately, society sees in these people little willpower to solve their problems which, in most cases, can be traced back to genetics ».
But the reality is much more complex than that: we have not been educated to listen to the difficulties of the psyche as much as physical pains as something natural. Normality is to think that it is something that affects everyone: a disorder becomes disease when no one teaches us and helps us to take care of it.
It is Stefania’s father, shortly before falling ill, who takes her to the family clinic: there she is followed free of charge by a psychologist, for a year, until she comes of age. “It was she who helped me, session after session, to open up about my family situation. She was always the one who guided me in identifying one or two trusted people to confide in: I took courage and talked about it to the mother of a friend of mine and to my boyfriend. It was scary but also liberating to be able to tell someone and realize that not only did those people not reject me or betray my trust, but they became a crucial part of my informal support network as a teenager. “
The search for children survivors, like her, it happens in the following years, while Stefania rides, wave after wave, the emotional tsunamis of which she is the protagonist together with her parents. Outside Italy, in the United States, Canada and Australia, it is much easier to find people who are experiencing the same situation as you. The children, from other countries, become a necessary support during the second phase of elaboration of what Stefania was going through. From their activism, the desire to create something also flourishes in Italy: was born in 2011 the first Italian online mutual aid group reserved for children of parents with mental disorders, still active.
Source: Vanity Fair

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