A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria #470 - BRIGATA BASAGLIA. ConTatto 2026. Care as Collective Resistance (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

In an era that transforms every suffering into an individual problem to 
be managed privately, the three-day Brigata Bsaglia - ConTatto- 2026 
event represented a countercurrent. Not just a festival, not a 
specialist conference on mental health, but a political and human 
experiment that brought a radical question back to the forefront: who 
really cares? And above all, what does it mean to care in a society that 
systematically produces hardship, isolation, and violence? The fifth 
edition of the event, organized by the Brigata Basaglia in Milan, took 
place in the liberated spaces of the Collettivo Kasciavìt, confirming a 
conviction that has informed the collective's work for years: "It's not 
just the clinic that cures." A phrase that encompasses an entire 
worldview and opposes the contemporary tendency to medicalize every form 
of suffering, reducing social, economic, and political problems to 
individual issues to be treated through diagnoses and psychotropic drugs.
For three days, ConTatto brought together activists, practitioners, 
artists, people with direct experience of mental distress, and 
organizations committed to fighting for rights. A network of practices 
and knowledge that sought to build what institutions often forget: 
places of encounter, mutual listening, productive conflict, and solidarity.
The insight that informed Franco Basaglia's experience continues to 
resonate powerfully.
"Freedom is therapeutic," argued the Venetian psychiatrist who led the 
process that culminated in the closure of mental hospitals. An 
often-quoted phrase, yet one that still retains an extraordinary 
capacity to interrogate the present. If freedom heals, then suffering 
cannot be separated from the material and political conditions in which 
people live.
Mental health cannot be discussed while ignoring precarious work, 
exploitation, poverty, wars, racism, gender violence, or environmental 
devastation.
In a society that constantly demands adaptation, suffering is often 
interpreted as an individual's inability to keep up with the imposed 
pace. The dominant response is well-known: diagnostic labels, 
standardized protocols, and the growing use of psychotropic drugs. Tools 
that can play an important role in some situations, but which too often 
risk becoming devices of normalization. The problem isn't the person who 
can't cope with unsustainable conditions; the problem becomes the 
conditions themselves.
ConTatto has attempted to overturn this perspective. Don't ask for 
BRIGATA BASAGLIA. ConTatto 2026.
Care as collective resistance: how individuals adapt to a system that 
produces suffering, but how they build relationships, communities, and 
practices capable of transforming that system. Care that doesn't mean 
control, but rather the possibility of sharing vulnerability and 
desires, anger and hope.
Franca Ongaro wrote that "illness is not merely a biological fact, but a 
condition that takes on meaning within specific social relationships." 
This reflection seems particularly timely in an era in which mental 
distress is growing alongside the erosion of collective bonds. If 
distress also arises from social relationships, then care cannot be 
confined to a doctor's office or a health service: it must span 
territories, communities, and spaces of gathering and struggle.
This is why the dialogue with organizations like Disability Pride Milano 
and the support of Radio Aut Pavia was not simply a moment of 
organizational collaboration, but an integral part of a vision that 
considers health as a collective reality. Healing emerges from 
alliances, from building networks of mutual support, from the ability to 
imagine worlds other than those presented to us as inevitable.
In the Basaglia Brigade's final message, a crucial word appears: 
radicality. Not as ideological extremism, but as a desire to get to the 
root of problems. In a historical context marked by growing inequality, 
underpaid and unprotected jobs, and wars and genocides across the globe, 
psychological suffering cannot be viewed as a simply private matter. It 
also reflects a reality that too often demands obedience and adaptation 
rather than justice and dignity.
ConTatto 2026 reminded us that another possibility exists. A popular 
healing born from encounters between people, from collective 
organization, from culture, art, and social struggles. A healing that 
does not deny pain but removes it from isolation. A healing that does 
not require us to become more functional to a violent system, but to 
jointly build the conditions to transform it.
Perhaps this is the most vivid legacy of Basaglia and all the 
experiences that continue to draw inspiration from his work: remembering 
that mental health is inseparable from freedom, social justice, and the 
real possibility of participating in building one's own world. And that 
no therapy can replace what happens when people come together, recognize 
one another, and decide not to leave anyone alone.

Gabriel Cammarata.

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/wp-content/uploads/giugno2026_compressed-1.pdf
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