2 February 2005
"Crazy" Radio Gives Voice to Mental Patients
1 February 2005
Argentina's Radio La Colifata is no ordinary programme. For one thing, it means "Crazy Radio" in local Buenos Aires slang. It is also the first radio show in the world to broadcast live from a mental hospital. For the past 14 years, it has played a unique role in helping patients deal with problems and dispelling stereotypes about mental illness. And its popularity is growing, reports Nicola Fell for the Voice of America.
Radio La Colifata began with a small Dictaphone that Alfredo Olivera, a psychologist at Borda Hospital, started to use with patients. "I invited some patients to sit around a table and speak about whatever they wanted. The only thing they had to do was, if they wanted to talk, they had to have the Dictaphone in their hand, and when they were finished, pass to another. This, as a concept, already had an element of therapy - the right to speak, and giving the right to another."
Local community radio stations began broadcasting the interviews, which proved enormously popular with listeners. Network radio shows picked up the broadcasts and soon the hospital was providing equipment for live broadcasts.
The programme now reaches an estimated 12 million listeners in Argentina. There are plans for a television broadcast on Canal 7.
Olivera uses insights gleaned from group conversations in private therapeutic sessions with patients. He says 30 per cent of patients who participate in the programme are released from hospital. Not one of them who continue outpatient therapy with Radio Colifata has been re-admitted. In contrast, two-thirds of patients who do not continue outpatient therapy with the programme are re-admitted.
Julio Cesar participates in Radio Colifata as an outpatient. "The radio gives you the freedom to express yourself," he says. "It breaks frontiers. The wall that surrounds the hospital no longer exists because the antenna knocks it down."
Read the full story here: http://www.voanews.com/english/2004-12-14-voa61.cfm
Visit Radio Lacolifata: http://lacolifata.openware.biz/index.cgi
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