Nigeria - Imo state

Photos: Marco Giannattasio - 04/2018

Mental illness is one of the great holes of society, what characterizes it, is the absence of the patient towards the "normal" relational, family and emotional structures, but also the absence of the illness itself, absence from the political debate, from the common feel, from the possibility of effective care. In economically depressed and socially fibrillating places, such as the Niger Delta region, the marginalization of the sick reaches very high levels. The use of restraint, imprisonment, the loss of any capacity for self-determination are phenomena considered completely normal.

Rare, by now outdated by the times, but still existing the so-called traditional medicine clinics; in truth houses, often belonging of socalled kings or local chiefs, crammed in every corner, under the stairs or closet, in a jumble of psychiatric patients (of which specific disease of course it is not known), neurological, people who have developed addictions, possessed, victims of evil eye and so on. Which treatments are given to these people? Above all the charismatic and calming work of the owner, sorcerer, herbalist, an inextricable tangle of knowledge and superstitions. These photos are the story of a journey through these maze.