Matka’s Little Helper: Psychiatric Pharmaceuticals under Socialism

• In Event: Medical Humanities I: Socialist Medicine and Morality in East Central Europe

Abstract

During the later decades of socialism in Czechoslovakia, clinics, physicians, and psychologists increasingly prescribed psychoactive medications such as Rutodel and Somiton, a sedative and a sleeping medication, respectively—but not all citizens were equally likely to be prescribed these medications. Using records from a clinic in Ostrava, this paper will examine circumstances in which these medications were prescribed, to whom, and to what ends. It will pay particular attention to gender and show how women were disproportionately prescribed sedatives for gender-transgressive behaviors like violence and aggression.

Author

• Julia Mead, Harvard U