engleski

Contribution to the research of the organization of psychiatric care in socialist Yugoslavia: an overview of the possibilities and limitations of the modernization of the Neuropsychiatric Hospital Dr. Ivan Barbot Popovača

In this paper, the author compares the hospital life of patients and employees during Second World War and its aftermath with their institutional culture of living in the mature years of socialism in Croatia. From the previous research of the archival material relating to “Popovača” dating back to the 60s, more specifically the period after the dismissal of its first director dr. Ivan Barbot, reveals a critical attitude towards his approach to hospital management. Namely, he was accused that, as it is reported in the regional newspaper Moslavački list in March 1967, “the hospital was until 1963 an abandoned asylum psychiatric institution without the necessary financial base and adequate professional employees and could not have any significant medical effect.” It seems that the second director of “Popovača”, dr. Peter Draganov, improved the organization of the hospital’s activities. Hospital wards and facilities have been renovated. The qualification structure of the employees has been advanced through their additional training and specializations. Also, the number of hospital specialist doctors and other medical professionals increased and its utility standard improved. The foregoing has contributed to changes in patient access and methods of psychiatric treatment. And while “Popovača” used to be known as an infirmary, asylum for the needy from the most backward parts of the country or the “Moslavina Town” due to its agricultural production and animal husbandry, crafts and the sale of its own products outside the hospital, in the late 1960s, the latter was placed in the same category with other psychiatric institution in the SFRY. The accuracy of the previously reported, largely negative connotations of the hospital’s description, is confirmed by the contents of the patient files of patients hospitalized in “Popovača” during and after the Second World War. Controversial aspects of the medical treatment of patients treated at this hospital, the debatable qualifications of employees and their (un)professional attitude towards patients are also evidenced by official documentation dating from the time when dr. Barbot was its director. Continued research assumes the comparative analysis of medical history data of patients treated at Popovača during the 1960s and 1970s with other archival sources, such as newspaper articles and professional publications in the field of psychiatry dating back to the study period

History of psychiatry, psychiatry in rural areas, Neuropsychiatric hospital dr. Ivan barbot popovača, psychiatric patients, socialist Yugoslavia

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