Co-autore dell’Atlante delle Dipendenze, sezione Book Reviews, Notes and Comments degli Annali dell’Istituto Superiore di Sanità – Vol. 51 – 2015.
Sometimes an attractive title conceals the true contents of a book; so what may look as a joke, I Matti del Duce (The mad people of the Duce) lives up to the rich data and the thoroughness of this study, dealing with the use of psychiatric internment for repression of political dissent during the two decades of fascist dictatorship. The author analyses quite effectively the close plot between the culture of the time, “psychiatric science”, ancient prejudices, ideological motivations and medicalization of dissent serving political repression. In parallel, it documents the responsibilities of many psychiatrists, mainly mental hospitals’ directors, in implementing the expulsion of the dissentients from the social body, often for the rest of their lifetimes. Based on the examination of 44 540 records of antifascists filed in the “Casellario politico centrale” (Central Political Records Office) of the Home Office Department – an analysis performed by Adriano Dal Pont for the Quaderni dell’Associazione Nazionale Perseguitati Politici Italiani Antifascisti, ANPPIA – the author identifies 475 cases (1.06%) of psychiatric internment; of these, 122 (25%) died in a mental hospital, a higher mortality rate than that of prisoners or dissentients assigned to “confino” (internal exile). Research in some of the sections of the “Archivio di Stato” (Bologna, Macerata) suggests that hundreds of other dissentients were interned in mental hospitals without placing their records in the central “Casellario”.