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ARGENTINA: Psychiatric Patients’ Radio Station Up in the Air

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jun 18 2007 (IPS) - La Colifata was the first radio station in the world to broadcast live from a psychiatric hospital, and has played a key role in the reinsertion of patients in the community. But now the Argentine station, which has inspired the creation of around 40 similar stations in Latin America and Europe, has run out of financing.

“We are in big trouble,” psychologist Alfredo Olivera, the director and coordinator of the project, told IPS. “The (Buenos Aires) city government has not renewed our contract and our money has run out. Only the mystique of work built up over the course of 16 years is enabling us to soldier on,” he said sadly.

Bankruptcy and uncertainty over the future of a programme in which more than 40 patients a year are involved hit just as a dream came true for the station. La Colifata organised the First World Meeting of Radio Stations Produced by Mental Health Users on May 29-Jun. 2 in Buenos Aires, in which patients and radio station coordinators from several countries took part.

A panel was organised during the conference to judge 34 short films on how society perceives mental illness. The jury was made up of 12 patients from different countries. “It was marvellous and moving to see them debate the criteria for selection,” said Olivera.

All of the stations participating in the conference were inspired by La Colifata (FM 100.1), whose name is a non-derogatory slang word for “crazy” and which began to operate in the courtyard of the José Borda mental hospital in Buenos Aires in 1991, when Olivera was a student.

“Each station has forged its own path, but what we have in common is that those who do the speaking are people affected by mental illness, and that our aim is to alleviate suffering,” said Olivera.

The patients “suffer for a number of reasons, including social rejection, which is what we are trying to combat by generating ties between them and the community,” he explained.

The programme has had therapeutic success. Half of those who work at the radio station have been released from the hospital, and La Colifata serves as outpatient therapy for some of them.

In fact, relapse and readmission rates are much higher for those who leave La Colifata after they are released from the hospital than for those who continue doing outpatient therapy with the station.

“If they stay in the project, we work together with their therapists outside of the hospital, and do workshops and group therapy,” said Olivera.

La Colifata also created “a bridge to the community, and we are often overwhelmed by the number of patients who want to keep taking part, because when they are released, they are practically expelled from the system,” he said.

Hugo López, a 73-year-old patient who works at the station, told IPS about his own case: “I had serious problems in the 1980s, I was admitted to the hospital and had a relapse, and in the early 1990s I started to fall into depression. So a friend took me to Borda hospital, I started outpatient treatment, and I joined La Colifata.”

López, who presents the station’s music programme “La Fogonera”, is against the idea of people being admitted for long periods to mental hospitals.

“You’re there all day long, doped up on pills, as if you were dead in life, and afterwards you’re afraid to face the madhouse outside again. That’s why we’re calling for short periods of admission, and halfway houses,” said López, who is proud to have graduated to treatment without medication.

He described many patients in Borda hospital as chain-smoking, underfed, toothless and lifeless people deformed by psychotropic drugs.

“Psychotropic drugs calm your anxiety, but they annul you as a person, and there are doctors who turn you into prisoners of your meds,” he complained.

In his case, the radio station helped him “to recover the coordination between my mind and my words.”

“If ‘normal’ people are scared to face a microphone, just imagine what it’s like for us,” he said. But the station helped him lead a happier life, with better access to culture and art, he added.

López was among those who took part in the May 29-Jun. 2 conference, whose objective, said Olivera, was “to think together about this unique mental health treatment tool as applied in different contexts.”

“It was very enriching,” he added. “We had a few really good speeches.”

Europe was represented by patients and radio station coordinators from the Leon Dit station in France, which works with adolescent day patients; Radio Nikosia, run by outpatients in Barcelona, Spain; Romper Barreras, in Málaga, Spain; and Radio Rete 180 from Italy.

Latin American participants were from Radio Vilardevoz, which broadcasts from the Vilardebó psychiatric hospital in Montevideo, Uruguay; Radio Diferencia, which operates in the El Salvador hospital in the Chilean city of Valparaíso; and Potencia Mental, the newest station, which emerged in 2006 in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre.

The different ways of using this alternative form of treatment were studied in the conference, and the differing levels of support received by the stations stood out. Fifteen people from Leon Dit travelled to Argentina for the conference with government and civil society support, while La Colifata had to assist the Uruguayan group by paying the travel costs of three of the six participants from Vilardevoz, said Olivera.

“Those of us who are in Latin America have more problems,” he said, although he added that he was confident that the conference helped strengthen ties that could lead to future exchanges and sharing of experiences, or to the inflow of new funds.

But the Borda hospital project is now at risk of folding. The city of Buenos Aires had signed a contract for La Colifata to produce short television programmes to be broadcast on the Canal de la Ciudad, a TV station belonging to the city government, in 2006. That, along with private donations, enabled the project to grow.

La Colifata, which has its own studio in the hospital, financed by a private individual, created a civil association and opened an office where professionals and technicians work. There is an editing station there, and an area where patients from the radio station take part in workshops and group therapy.

In March, after the station had waited for the funds from the city for three months, the authorities informed it that the contract would not be renewed this year, when a new city government takes office.

So not only has the television programme idea been cancelled, but the station can no longer cover its running costs.

Olivera and the patients have kept producing the radio programme from the hospital, and the station continues to provide as much therapy as possible.

López also noted the serious problem caused by the loss of support from the city government. When the contract was in effect, the patients working on the television programmes were paid 200 pesos (around 68 dollars) a month, which went a long way towards helping them survive.

“You see the most unbelievable things. For example, there are people who have been living in the hospital for 10 years just because they have nowhere else to go,” he said.

“I have a house and a pension because I worked for many years, but many (former patients) live in the street,” said López. “Now three of my friends got assistance from the city government to pay for a room in a boarding house. But what about the rest?”

He believes that 60 percent of the patients in Borda hospital could do some kind of work. “Nevertheless, they just die there, abandoned by their families, with nothing to do. The thing is, when you enter the dark tunnel of the mind, if there isn’t a helping hand to pull you out, you simply die,” said López.