A joint editorial effort between the National General Archive and the Reserve Bank makes it easier for readers to delve into the extraordinary work of psychiatrist and writer Antonio Zaglul, who, given the deterioration observed in the mental health of today’s society, should be taken as a reference point to retrace his steps and assess the alarms that he raised throughout his fruitful existence so that the subject would be included among Dominican priorities.
In its editorial last Wednesday, this newspaper warned the country, in the face of sectors that call for greater investment in mental health in the face of crimes such as those of mothers who murder their daughters, that it is not “just a budget problem,” but that “it is society that is sick and needs to undertake a process of reflection on its values and purposes, to plan a future based on ideals that aim primarily at the education of young people so that the future we leave to the next generations is not a world of sick minds.”
Zaglul, author of essays such as My 500 Madmen, Gallery of Dominican Doctors, In the Darkness of Madness and a biography of Evangelina Rodríguez, the first Dominican doctor, among others, suffered before dying from the neglect into which the Padre Billini Psychiatric Hospital, popularly known as “El 28”, had fallen, in the face of neoliberal currents that understood investment in these facilities as a waste of resources.
Many Dominican media outlets, which irresponsibly subscribe to the jargon imposed by foreign agendas, structured by international organizations that conspire against the Dominican nation, are only alarmed by what they call “machista violence,” which provokes “femicides.” It happens that they have not sought a qualification for infanticides and other abuses committed by Dominican mothers against innocent children, sometimes from the time they are in the womb.
The proposal for reflection in the aforementioned editorial is in line with the thinking of Zaglul, who as a psychiatrist demonstrated his love for Dominicanness, always respectful of our cultural life.
