Italian cooperatives

Post-war psychiatric deinstitutionalisation got off to a late start in Italy, and, once started, took a rather different path compared with the psychiatric services elsewhere in Western Europe. As the process unfolded, the psychiatric innovators in northern Italy developed a new approach to providing employment to people with mental illness. The innovation is called a social enterprise (impresa sociale); alternatively, because it adheres to a business structure commonly found in north-eastern Italy – the worker cooperative – it is often referred to under that name (cooperativa di lavoro). The model has been adopted elsewhere (usually without the worker-cooperative business structure), and in English-speaking countries it has come to be called a social firm or, as in North America, an affirmative business. The social firm is a business with a dual mission: it is established to create employment for people with disabilities and to provide a useful product or service. The company often employs a mixture of disabled and non-disabled employees in a roughly 50 : 50 proportion. It is worth telling the story of the development of this innovation in some detail.

In 1961, a young Italian psychiatrist, Franco Basaglia, took over the directorship of an asylum in Gorizia near the then Yugoslavian border. Working with a small group of associates, he gradually eliminated the use of restraints, straitjackets, bars and keys and restored personal clothing and dignity to the inmates, as many had done elsewhere in Europe.