Looking back: Italian Psychiatry from its Origins to Law 180 of 1978

Italian psychiatry is usually renowned for the radical anti-institutional movement and the Reform Law of 1978, to understand which requires a historical analysis. In the 1960s Italian psychiatric culture had reached a deadlock due to its obsolete biological, strictly neuro-anatomical, explanatory approach (so-called ‘organicism’) postulated by academic institutions and awkwardly implemented in asylum practice. One prominent figure in shaping this philosophy was Cesare Lombroso, internationally known as the father of criminal anthropology. This attitude became sharper and more oppressive during the Fascist regime, where international exchanges and collaboration were discouraged when not repressed. So anachronistic was the situation in the 1960s that the anti-institutional movement founded and led by Franco Basaglia swept professionals, politicians and public opinion in its wake. What in most countries took the form of gradual reform became a radical reaction in Italy and, in less than twenty years, turned one of the most deprived institutional systems into the most radical community mental health care system in the world.