Bodies and spaces of insanity. Towards a new bond of care between the territory and psychiatric vulnerabilities

Abstract

The paper reflects about the relationship between space and the body affected by psychiatric vulnerability. In 1978, with Law no. 180, Italy, the first nation in the world, closed psychiatric hospitals and established a system of treatment for mental discomfort widespread in the territories. However, this system has not yet been implemented and, at the same time, especially as a result of the CoViD-19 outbreak, psychic vulnerability continues to grow. In this perspective, the paper questions what new links of care can be woven between territory and mental health. It presents a survey on how the relationship between bodies (with particular regard to the female ones) and madness developed in Italy, through the reading of spatial – architectural and urban – devices which, since the birth of the psychiatric discipline in the mid-nineteenth century, have been used over time to ‘manage’ mental illness. The reflections here proposed dialogue with urban planning, summoning it to deal with the concept of ‘city that care’, understood as a project of mental health and social cohesion based on a new ‘alliance among bodies’ and between them and territorial resources.