Psychiatric care and humanitarianism. From philanthropy to the mental pro-hygiene movement

This lecture will analyse two key moments in the history of psychiatry in which humanitarian concern for the mentally ill (among other factors) helped to bring about care reforms and changes in the scientific, social and cultural view of madness: 1) the emergence, at the turn of the 18th century, of alienism, a new form of mental medicine in the framework of a broad philanthropic movement that led to a humanisation of the treatment of the mentally "insane", as well as the rational consideration and scientific treatment of same; and 2) the emergence, in the first third of the 20th century, of the mental pro-hygiene movement, which played an important role in raising public awareness about the terrible situation of mental patients, as well as the conception of a new way of viewing madness in scientific and humanitarian terms.

Neither of these two moments was without its contradictions and shades of grey. Indeed, humanitarian sensibility towards the mad has always been interwoven with the idea that people with a mental disorder are "dangerous", and psychiatry has been viewed as expert knowledge closely related with social defence strategies, all of which forces us to consider the question from a particularly dialectic perspective.