Meeting with Pompeo Martelli (psychiatrist) and Marco Salustri (anthropologist)
In collaboration with TheMHS Learning Network and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP)
The Italian Cultural Institute is pleased to host a meeting dedicated to the project of founding a Museum of the Mind in Sydney on the model of the one already existing in Rome in the area once occupied by the psychiatric hospital Santa Maria della Pietà. The event will be attended by the Director of the Museum, psychiatrist Pompeo Martelli, and anthropologist Marco Salustri, head of the Educational Service of the Museum. The project to found a Museum of the Mind on the grounds where the Callan Park Hospital for the Insane (Rozelle) once stood is promoted by TheMHS Learning Network and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP). Some representatives of these two organizations will take part in the meeting, among them Vivienne Miller MA, Director of TheMHS Conference and and co-convenor of Sydney Mind Museum, Arts and Neuroscience Precinct Steering Group.
On May 13, 1978 the Italian Parliament approved Law 180 for Psychiatric Reform, the so-called “Basaglia Law” (from the name of its promoter, psychiatrist Franco Basaglia) that abolished psychiatric hospitals in Italy. This law will lead in 1999 to the closure of the psychiatric hospital Santa Maria della Pietà in Rome, and the following year to the birth of the Museo Laboratorio della Mente (Museum of the Mind). The aim was to build communicative contexts that would favour the “visibility” of mental suffering, the unveiling of spatial, physical, psychological and social constraints and practices that would help the “reconstruction” of subjectivity. The Museum was established with the aim of offering people a new way of reading and perceiving the psychological distress, acting as a mediator and interpreter of a renewed sense of community that finds a point of reference in the museum institution. In the course of the evening the speakers will present the experience of this original museum that is integral part of the Italian National Health Service within the frame of Italian social psychiatry and community.
Dr. Pompeo Martelli (psychotherapist, clinical psychologist and ethno-psychiatrist) has been director of the Museo Laboratorio della Mente since its foundation in 2000, after working between 1981 and 1988 at the Santa Maria della Pietà Psychiatric Hospital. Between 2000 and 2002 he was professor of Cultural Psychiatry at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, and between 2002 and 2008 he was a professor of Psychology and Medical Anthropology at the La Sapienza University of Rome. Dr. Martelli is author and co-author of articles, chapters and books on rehabilitation and recovery of the mentally ill, on public health systems related to mental health, on deinstitutionalization, on the mental health of Aboriginal people and remote communities, on intercultural psychiatry, history of psychoanalysis, prevention and promotion of mental health. He has lectured and offered advice on mental health services in the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Canada, USA and Australia.
Dr. Marco Salustri obtained a degree in Anthropology at the La Sapienza University of Rome in 2006. In 2013 he obtained a Master degree as curator of museums and contemporary art events, and in 2016 he specialized in Demo-ethno-anthropological Heritage at the University of Perugia. Between 2014 and 2018 he curated the following exhibitions held at the Museo Laboratorio della Mente: Safe-Keeping (Custody) by Sarah Bennett (Great Britain) (2014), Cultural Dislocations and Hybridity by Jaswant Guzder (Canada) (2017), Nel corpo della città of Gea Casolaro (Rome) (2018). Since 2015 he has been working for the Educational Service of the Museo Laboratorio della Mente. Dr. Salustri is author and co-author of articles, chapters and books on the subject of psychiatric stigma, deinstitutionalization, emigration and mental health, prevention and promotion of mental health, art produced by outsiders, museology, museography and virtual environments.
Free admission. Limited seats.
Reservations required: www.eventbrite.com.au