One hundred and five victims since January, with Giulia Cecchettin, 22 years old, from Vigonovo, the latest martyr of male violence. Slaughtered by her ex in a scant hour. A sequence of cruelty declined to the nth degree. She, who tried to defend herself from the stab wounds for twenty-five minutes , hadn't wanted it anymore for a few months. But even he couldn't help but say to the German police, who stopped him on the A9 motorway in Saxony-Anhalt: " I killed my girlfriend ." But no, they were no longer together, Giulia and Filippo Turetta .

The death of the young woman according to a horror script which since 2013 in Italy has been called feminicide. But the same behaviors were repeated even before the law.

Graziella Boi explains them to Unionesarda.it, the psychiatrist who directs the Department of Mental Health and Addictions at the Cagliari Local Health Authority, for the southern area of the Vast Area. Boi also commutes to Rome, where she sits at the ministerial technical table established in 2019: eleven members and the aim of rewriting the national prevention, treatment and rehabilitation pathways for mental health.

Director, a woman killed, another, because it puts an end to an unhappy love story. What is continuing to happen?

«In Italy, and unfortunately we are not the only country, respect for others is a neglected topic. These days, in the wake of the Giulia massacre, we continue to repeat that it would be necessary to introduce emotional education in schools. I say that it would be enough to implement civic education effectively, starting from primary school. Because feminicides also pass through here, based on the failure to recognize the rights of others. This is a basic rule of social coexistence. We operators are invited to schools to talk about drugs, alcohol and gambling, but not about mental health and the disorders that are affecting current events."

How much pathology is there in a femicide?

«The phenomenon is complex. Educating to respect others is the only way to take action. And we also have an obligation to do it quickly. There is always a before that anticipates violence. To young people, for example, no one explains when and how they should ask for help. Among the disorders that are little talked about there are also those related to nutrition and depression, characterized by social closure and sometimes also by the inability to relate to others. All situations can have a happy ending by training adults to recognize the early signs of suffering and discomfort in children and adolescents."

When should you ask for help?

«When you are faced with obsessive behaviors such as jealousy. It is thought that they are equivalent to falling in love, but instead they are something else, sometimes they are real paranoia. This is demonstrated by the fact that obsessive and socially withdrawn traits also emerged in Giulia's self-confessed murderer: he related almost exclusively to her. This does not mean that Filippo Turetta is incapable of understanding and wanting. On the contrary: this young man must be considered fully responsible for what he did."

Here it is: can a good boy, as Giulia's killer is portrayed, become a monster in one night?

«Certainly not. Turetta followed a path of his own which led him to say about Giulia: "Either mine or no one else's". Because this is feminicide. This is the obsession that drives men to kill their wives, girlfriends or exes, keeping their homicidal ideas, perhaps present for some time, very secret."

Is it possible to bluff that well?

«Unfortunately, yes, it is possible. And in fact, until before feminicide, those who kill were most often considered a good person. So much so that often nothing suggests such a heinous act, the case of Vigonovo is an example of this."

What should we learn to understand about the massacres of women committed in apparently normal contexts?

«We must understand that evil exists in each of us. Even a so-called normal person can kill, using extreme violence."

Turetta's father spoke of a perfect son. Was it possible that not even the family had noticed any signs?

«I repeat: he was able to keep his intentions hidden. It must be said that we are still in the investigation phase, the boy hasn't even been questioned yet. It would seem, but I don't want to be superficial, that there was premeditation. It seems to me that Turetta followed a process carried out in a meticulous manner. The parents said they saw a heartbroken son after the end of the story with Giulia, but they didn't understand that he was in a malignant and toxic love affair. Perhaps they could have understood this by seeking more effective interactions with their son, paying attention to the signs of aggression so well observed by his friends. Sometimes you discover too late that you have a monster in your house, not an angel."

In times of teenage families, where does parental inadequacy begin?

«It begins the moment you become a parent and choose educational models based on values that are often only theoretical. Instead, respect and esteem, as well as the absence of verbal, physical and psychological violence, rarely lead to dysfunctional results if they are used. Civic education courses for young people should be extended to families. It would be a great thing to involve parents and children together. There would be better prevention, because it would be shared. In psychiatric disorders, it is true that the patient is one, but I am firmly convinced that the family represents the co-patient. The person who suffers would feel less alone with the understanding of relatives, who can be guaranteed support thanks to these help paths."

Let's take the case of Vigonovo again: Turetta the father said that he advised his son to go to the psychologist. How do we intervene in these cases?

«You cannot intervene: in Italy there is freedom of treatment. We have only one medical document that obliges you to undergo healthcare treatment: it is the Tso. But to request it, the severity of the pathology and the urgency of a therapy to be carried out in a protected environment, such as that of the psychiatric diagnosis and treatment service, are required. It should be added that the patient undergoing TSO lacks awareness of the disease."

Does the dangerousness of the person matter?

«No, the danger is not covered by the health services. So: parents can also give advice to their children, and this is an important support. But if a child does not deem it necessary to undertake the therapeutic process, he cannot be forced. In our services we should collaborate more with psychologists, letting them deal with the so-called common emotional disorders, which have a negative impact on our society."

What are common emotional disorders?

«We are talking about anxiety, panic attacks, obsessive compulsive disorders or mild depression. They are not serious disorders, but they still affect the quality of life."

Looking at the numbers of feminicides, the 2013 law does not seem like a deterrent.

«Behind feminicides there are very complex situations. The mere calculation of the length of the sentence (from 12 to 24 years without aggravating circumstances, ed.) does not fall within the reasoning of those who kill. In recent days there has also been an attempted murder: the man who tried to take the life of one of his exes was a parolee who didn't have a bracelet."

Are you in favor of the bracelet?

"I do".

Lawyers are increasingly requesting psychiatric evaluations for their murderer clients. Is it a defensive strategy that pays off?

«As the local health authority of Cagliari, we have created a departmental structure for forensic psychiatry. We act as a link between the Courts and the defendants. This organization represents a positive fact, because it benefits both the expert, who can count on our support, and the person invited to undergo rehabilitation therapy courses as an alternative to imprisonment. However, detecting a psychiatric disorder does not directly lead to a diagnosis of mental infirmity or semi-infirmity, nor does it automatically mean that the killer will avoid prison. The expertise is used precisely to understand how much the disorder itself impacts a person's ability to carry out criminal behaviour. On the other hand, being violent or antisocial does not necessarily mean having developed a true psychiatric disorder."

To give a practical example: in the case of a murder, is being bipolar a mitigating factor?

"Absolutely not. A pathology must be serious to affect the sentence. If it is mild or moderate, it may be irrelevant. With the expertise all these aspects are ascertained. In any case the pathology must also have a bearing on the crime committed."

A few days ago, a 36-year-old Piedmontese feminicide, who had killed his girlfriend in Sardinia, was able to leave prison because he was obese and an inveterate smoker. Outrage exploded on social media.

«I consider the decision taken by the Surveillance Court of Turin to be correct: this person was assured the right to treatment. Evidently there was no clinical center in the prison where he was staying. It is civility to allow a prisoner to recover an acceptable level of health while waiting to resume his prison journey. In other times, such news would not have caused a sensation. Now the mass media talk about it with emphasis and most of the time they generate anger. If anything, I was outraged as a person by the fact that the father, interviewed on TV and with his son at his side, gave inadequate answers, classifying the femicide committed as a normal fight between kids. Erika, that was the name of the victim, was killed with 57 stab wounds. Above all, this gave a negative spin to the whole issue. A father who acquits his son in the face of such a brutal murder creates in the population the fact that the law is not the same for everyone. Personally, I didn't find great respect for the victim in those words."

The first lawyer appointed by the Turetta family said that his client loved Giulia and even baked her biscuits. This statement as the law?

«Evil is terribly normal. You can bake biscuits for your girlfriend, and then cruelly kill her if she refuses to continue the story. Certainly, the acquittal attitude, even the one found in the statement of Turetta's lawyer, is unacceptable. Words must be weighed. Giulia's femicide is extremely serious due to the way in which the young woman's life was taken away."

Punishment must re-educate. Does this really happen?

«Prisons must become places of re-education and, when possible, rehabilitation. For this reason, as director of the Mental Health Department, I ensured that the number of operators was increased in the Uta prison, also including two permanent psychiatrists, five psychologists and two educators. However, penitentiaries need to have adequate spaces, also for activities, not just for treatment."

Do inadequate prisons increase the number of prisoners with mental disorders?

«In reality, what is growing is not the number of prisoners with psychiatric pathologies, but the use of drugs, often considered necessary to calm the pain of the soul resulting from the deprivation of freedom. I'll give you an example: if a prisoner suffers because his mother is dying, it goes without saying that it makes little sense to administer a medicine, as it is only an apparent buffer solution. The helping relationship must be based to a greater extent on psychological support. Antidepressants are the most used drugs after those to treat cardiovascular diseases, but in doing so they anesthetize societies."

There is disappointment in his words.

«I understand that we try to make the inmates feel a little better, but we need a rehabilitation process. In this sense, penal colonies, where prisoners are made responsible through daily commitment to the most varied activities, are a very good response to achieving the objective of re-education. The same happens in workhouses, even if we don't have them in Sardinia."

The news coming from prisons, including our island, reveals that the State is not able to guarantee the re-educational function of punishment. So does he give discounts on sentences to absolve himself of this failure?

«The field is thorny, it touches many areas, it is impossible to summarize in a few lines. As regards my sector of expertise, for some years there has been an ever-increasing increase in explicit requests from prisoners to allow access to alternative measures to detention. The problems linked to overcrowding in penitentiaries often lead to explosive behavior which only apparently justifies the use of a diagnostic and pharmacological process."

The problem of feminicides is social. But before that it is masculine. What advice do you give to men?

«It's difficult to give advice. Much better is prevention, starting from the value of life, essentially made up of respect."

More and more often we talk about basic psychologists: is he a necessary figure?

«He is an excellent figure and welcome if he has the specialist skills to also deal with common emotional disorders».

The fact remains that going to the psychologist, and even more so to the psychiatrist, continues to be considered something for crazy people.

«Of course, unfortunately prejudice and stigma are still prevalent. But we must start working on mental health in schools: only in this way can we provide young people and teachers with the tools to recognize the signs of distress. Ordering your thoughts and understanding yourself better are exercises, and as such require a learning process. But the environment also counts: psychiatry is deeply linked to epigenetics: the quality of life contributes to modifying our genes."

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