Eustachio Loperfido Collection

Descriptive sheet

Name: Loperfido Collection

Type: book collection

Chronological details: second half of the 20th century

Size: 883 volumes

Possessor: Eustachio Loperfido

Donors: heirs

Historical-biographical profile: Eustachio (Nino) Loperfido was born in Matera in 1932. He graduated in Medicine and Surgery in Bologna in 1957 and specialised in the Clinic of Nervous and Mental Diseases in 1960. He obtained his professorship in child neuropsychiatry in 1966. He was head of the maternal and child service at the Bologna USL, councillor for health at the Bologna City Council from 1970 to 1980, and President of Istituzione Gian Franco Minguzzi until 2007. He died in Forlì in 2008.
The author of numerous specialist publications, he was a pioneer in the fight against mental distress, a child neuropsychiatrist and a public administrator. Ever a leading figure and an innovator, he anticipated the Basaglia law and was always in the frontline proposing social services under the banner of inclusion rather than mere assistance. He was responsible for the closure of special needs schools. He devoted his life’s work to the weakest, to children and the elderly, to the world of women with their special needs, to the world of deviance and disability. He is considered one of the fathers of modern child neuropsychiatry.

Type and date of acquisition: 2010 donation

Conservation status: good

Cataloguing status: fully catalogued

Research tool: extraction of titles from the Library Catalogue

Reading mode: free; volumes can be borrowed

Subject areas covered: psychology, psychiatry, child neuropsychiatry