The Marco Bellavia case: why do we all become bullies when it comes to mental health?

The Marco Bellavia case

“If one person is in need and the other 22 help him, he will do it. Alone he can't make it ”: and in fact Marco Bellavia didn't make it, so much so that he had to withdraw from the Big Brother Vip in which he was also nominated, after being abandoned by his teammates. The actor of Love Me Licia, seen in programs such as Bim Bum Bam, Strangelove and Forum, was a symbol of the young TV of the nineties but for years they had lost track. His chance to relaunch with the Canale 5 reality show did not go quite as hoped: he entered the most spied-on house on TV last September 19, he already left it on October 1, abandoning the game after having repeatedly manifested his emotional and psychological discomfort but finding in the other competitors a strong hostility and "herd" dynamics.

In fact, over the weekend, the very negative comments against the "Vippons" multiplied on the web, who not only they failed to support Bellavia but also often marginalized or mocked him. “In my opinion he does it on purpose,” said Daniele del Moro, apparently by profession an influencer; Patrizia Rossetti ruled: “If she is ill she should not have come to the GF but she had to stay at home. If that's the case, he goes to psychiatry ”, a judgment remarked by Elenoire Ferruzzi:“ It should be in neurodeliri ”. Even stronger Ginevra Lamborghini: "For me you deserve to be bullied, you deserve it", after he would have improperly stroked her side. Bullying is the most widespread accusation against competitors who, including Gegia who continually accused her of being a "whiner", threw themselves against Bellavia without understanding her discomfort, with the exception perhaps of the very young model Antonella Fiordelisi.

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"Marco is a good person, perhaps too sensitive, and he asked for help several times in the house but no one helped him. They taught me to help people in need, not to bury them, ”said ex-wife Elena Travaglia. And in addition to the online reactions, some fans gathered around the house in Cinecittà shouting accusations at the competitors. In the meantime, one of the sponsors of the program, Amica Chips, has dissociated himself as “synonymous with friendship, sharing, integration”, defining himself as “neither advocates nor supporters of what the protagonists do and say”. Everyone then expects that in tonight's episode the conductor Alfonso Signorini (who last Thursday said that Bellavia's psychological situation would be deepened and followed by the team of psychologists of the program). Knowing the television mechanisms it is logical that the topic will be dealt with extensively, perhaps trying to polarize the positions, what seems less likely is that the competitors will suffer real consequences for their discriminatory behavior.

Beyond everything, the damage is done. Although this edition of Big Brother Vip was inaugurated by some insights, even sensible ones, on some social issues starting from the personal experiences of some of the competitors (the transsexuality of Eleonoire Ferruzzi, the seriousness of Giovanni Ciacci ...), on the mental health front there is no has once again succeeded in addressing the issue appropriately. As always, everything concerning the psyche and mental equilibrium is seen as something abstract and impalpable, therefore not demonstrable and therefore aleatory: names such as "crazy", "crazy", "not well" are still used to keep quiet quirks or idiosyncrasies, but when you take the step towards depression, bipolarism etc. we tend not to believe those who talk about it ("The madman did this, then they threw him away", added Charlie Gnocchi, speaking of the competitor who has already gone out). Those who are excessively "empathic" - as Bellavia defined herself, who in recent years reinvented herself as a mental coach - is marginalized because it does not correspond to the norms of normality and acceptability.

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It is known, among other things, that television is a huge meat grinder and above all reality shows we are hungry for stories of discomfort and then make them explode and exploit all the possible media drama . The rules of the game are those, but even the rules can often be changed. Recently came the news of the suicide of Manuel Vallicella, a former tronista of Men and Women who had withdrawn from that program because he could not bear the pressure of the show's mechanisms. In Italy, however, this type of news always passes through the filter of gossipy curiosity and never instead with a view to advancing the discourse on mental health. In the United States obviously it seems to be on another planet, with many Hollywood stars who have no qualms about expressing their inner disagreements: Tom Holland, the protagonist of Spider-Man has left social media due to the psychological pressure they put on him, Demi Lovato has often publicly addressed her bipolar disorder, Adele cleared postpartum depression etc.

Absent even in most political programs at the last elections, mental health is the great absentee in Italian public opinion and above all in our culture, where psychic difficulties are always cloaked in a moral or value judgment: you have mental problems because you are weak, strange, not centered, unprepared for life, because you go looking for it. As often happens, fragility is marginalized rather than understood and accepted. The case of Marco Bellavia will almost certainly be resolved in a television fuss that, passing to the next nomination, will leave little trace even within the Big Brother Vip: yet the heartfelt reaction of part of the public gives hope that a new sensitivity is always spreading. more.