Group for Transcultural Relations
Group for Transcultural Relations is an Italian NGO founded in Milan in 1980, from the activities of the Institute for Transcultural Research, founded in 1968 by Dr Rosalba Terranova Cecchini.
Dr Rosalba Terranova Cecchini is one of the first Italian scholars to take an interest in transcultural psychiatry.
She is the first woman to enter a psychiatric hospital.
“At the time, the mentally ill were considered extremely dangerous and therefore there were no women in psychiatry.”
Transcultural psychiatry
Transcultural psychiatry is a modern discipline. Transcultural thinking is based on the notion that the sociocultural context has a major influence on the developmental processes of the human psyche.
The aim of transcultural psychiatry is to bring out the cultural peculiarities of the patient. The therapy focuses on the perspective of the patient and not the therapist, who studies and analyses the patient’s culture, getting to know him and treating him as a human being and not as a ‘madman’.
“Don’t laugh at the madman, laugh with him.”
For more information on transcultural psychiatry please click on the website of Transcultural Health Institute.