Crazy radio: the domestication of mental illness over the airwaves

May community radio be a therapy for patients who suffer from mental diseases? Can radio be a useful tool both for recovering the selves of the patients and for the ‘normal’ people outside the hospitals, helping to communicate less stereotyped images of the mental illness? This article will try to answer these questions, analysing two different case histories, the ones of Radio la Colifata of Buenos Aires – the first radio station to be totally conducted by patients – and of Radio Rete 180 of Mantova, Italy, the last born of this genre. The article is the result of ethnographic research conducted in Buenos Aires and in Mantova through the methods of participant observation of the live radio sessions and in-depth interviews with the patients. The experience I had studying these ‘crazy radio’ stations led me to the belief that community radio practice further enhances the feeling of being at home with ourselves and with others and can effectively work as a tool of social connection and participation, not only in the case of mentally ill patients as it will be shown here, but also in other cases of ‘Otherness’ (i.e. asylum seekers, migrants, prison inmates, etc.)