The Aftermath of Madness: Leaving the Belgrade and Sarajevo Asylums, c.1861-1914

• In Event: Stories of Disability Liberation in Eastern Europe: Art, Migration, (De)institutionalization, and Ecology

Abstract

The first asylum in Serbia, the Doma za s’ uma sišavše, was established in 1861, and remained the only medical institution for mental illness in the country until after the First World War. Between 1861-1890, only 397 patients left the mental asylum alive. While fourteen escaped, the other 383 were discharged as either “cured,” “improved,” or “uncured.” Meanwhile, in 1890s Sarajevo, the Ottoman-era hospital Vakufska bolnica/Vakufspital was transformed into an institution for mentally ill people, hundreds of whom only only stayed for short periods before being discharged into family or community care. While release from an asylum can be experienced as liberation from physical incarceration, legal restriction, and social stigma, it is unclear if Serbians and Bosnians in the late nineteenth century viewed it that way. Inspired by Mad Studies and Critical Disability Studies, my presentation examines legal documents, asylum records, press articles, cultural works, and personal writings to determine how policymakers, doctors, inmates, families, and communities imagined and experienced release from the Belgrade and Sarajevo mental institutions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Author

• Isabelle Avakumovic-Pointon, U of British Columbia (Canada)