«I always conclude my meetings, especially those in schools, by saying to the young people: ‘You are better than me’. Because young people are really smart, we just have to allow them to be smarter than us and that’s the problem. We are the ones who have to get out».
He goes straight to the point, telling of the “youth that flourishes and is more cultured than us” that he had the opportunity to meet in the various events around Italy, Daniel Mencarelliwinner of Young Witch Award in 2020 and author of the novel Everything asks for salvation which inspired the cult series of the same name made for Netflix.
Young people, the future, power relations between generations and mental health these are just some of the topics that the writer addressed during today’s event entitled “Everything asks for salvation: what is mental illness?” at the Robinson Arena inside of Più Libri più Liberi – medium and small publishing fair along with the actor, LGBTQIA+ rights activist and podcast author Eclipse, Peter Turano.
The forty-eight-year-old writer spares no criticism of his generation and of ‘adults’ who are so incapable of understanding the potential and problems of young people, more inclined to condemn them and label them in advance as listless, spoiled or problematic than to listen to them.
An attitude that Pietro Turano attributes to an attempt to preserve power. «In the great moments of crisis, which are the most interesting from a creative point of view because they allow you to give yourself the freedom to cross the fractures, you still somehow try to keep your own piece of power. Even if it seems hallucinatory, since we are talking about parents towards their children or their grandchildren, in reality it has everything to do with this. He will always have to deal with this detachment, this lack of legitimacy and dignity in not recognizing the other’s abilities by not considering them an equal“, has explained.
The lack of narration also plays its part, creating, according to Turano, a gigantic gap between «the billion pieces of information we are bombarded with and the lack of structures in which to put this information. This is what creates the discomfort, which is legitimate and lawful but we are told that it is not lawful until it explodes and you have to run for cover. This has to do with how they told us about life by making us believe that that was the only way to live. There is a total absence of recognition, in the narration with which they tell you from an early age how to live, as it forces you to think that that is the only way to do it». If the story, in fact, builds our imagination and shapes our world, everything that is not told to us or proposed as a legitimate alternative ends up not existing.
«Today we are facing a great crossroads which is not only that of the economic crisis but one that on the one hand wants to be part of a conservative narrative and on the other the great possibility of entering a narrative that offers the possibility of dialoguing with one’s own nature , the willingness to deal horizontally with all the themes of human nature, from sexuality to spirituality. We have the great possibility of entering a society that allows each individual to live every question with respect to his own nature in a lawful way. A possibility that would empty many of those places where mental illness is treated» agrees Mencarelli.
A generational issue but also and above all social and power relations between “who is above and who is below” which is configured in the various aspects of daily life from the very first years of life of the individual even in institutions such as the school.
«I lived my school years very badly, I spent two in drug therapy because the adult community called me sick», says Turano, retracing his autobiography made up of anxiety attacks and difficulty in making the so-called adult world recognize his own difficulty due to which he was rejected several times, however finding his redemption in the final exams by taking the maximum score to all tests.
Young people grappling with the definition and narration of the self, with their own frailties – which also sometimes take the form of mental illness – and with the rhetorical “swindle” of being defined as “the future” as if their life does not find space and the right to claim a present that seems to be destined to never arrive.
Young people who are dealing with «an epidemic of awareness, because today’s kids are more aware of me who am a few years older than them and their parents who often don’t even know what they are talking about. Now however – adds Turano – they know it, they are aware of it, and they feel rejected by society, by the administration, by the services because they don’t give them tools».
The theme of the right to mental health returns to the fore several times during the event, also through tools such as the basic psychologist, a figure who should find a place in every neighborhood so that everyone can take advantage of it. A service that today the very young are looking for elsewhere, including social networks, so much so that on Tik Tok the videos – including parodies – marked with the hashtag #mentalhealth have more than half a billion views. A sign of the great desire and need to talk about it and find out more, with the risk, however, of self-diagnoses that make the situation worse.
Born in 1987, Roman by birth and Sicilian by origin. Freelance communicator and press officer. After classical studies she graduated in Languages and international communication (curriculum Operators of intercultural communication) and later, at the University “La Sapienza” of Rome, she specialized in journalism, graduating with an investigative thesis on journalism on the earth of camorra. You press office and social media manager for festivals, events and associations in particular in the cultural and theatrical fields as well as for Europride 2011, Trame-Festival of books on the mafia and for the Omniroma press agency. You collaborate with various newspapers dealing in particular with social, cultural and political issues (from gender issues to social anti-mafia through immigration, the Lgbtqi world and that of civil rights). She has always been passionate about (inter) cultures, music, web, languages, languages and words.