Democratisation of Psychiatry in the (Post-)Yugoslav Space

RESEARCH CONTEXT
The disintegration of Yugoslavia has obscured numerous threads of progressive activist engagement. Among
these, fragile attempts to democratise psychiatric treatment by eliminating violence, questioning the
dominance of large psychiatric institutions, and allowing people with mental health issues to regain control
over their lives, are likely the least known. Such a state of affairs speaks volumes about the extent to which
psychiatric practice has been integrated into patriarchal and authoritarian social structures resisting critical
sociological inputs. With supposed expertise about mental well-being often mobilised to sustain
conservative political campaigns, psychiatry in the region – notwithstanding occasional emancipatory
impulses from within the discipline itself – has shown a reluctance to interrogate its core premises and has
remained a powerful societal ‘gatekeeper’ until today.
OBJECTIVES
This study analyses a series of initiatives for democratising psychiatry in the (post-)Yugoslav space and
deinstitutionalising mental health care by shifting it towards community settings. The three main objectives
follow the periodisation of activism that centres around the wars of the Yugoslav succession: the first
objective (1980-1990) explores the beginnings of deinstitutionalisation activism by focusing on two activist
groups operating in Belgrade, Serbia, and Ljubljana, Slovenia; the second objective (1990-2000) recovers the
war and immediate post-war attempts to develop community mental health services in Bosnia and
Herzegovina; the third objective (2000-2020) addresses user associations and alternative therapeutic models
proposed by LGBTQ activist groups in Serbia and Croatia in the post-war period.
METHODS
This study relies on a triangulation of inter-linked methods: 1) semi-structured interviews (activists, mental
health professionals, policy makers, opinion makers), 2) documentary analysis of both published and grey
material; and 3) participant observations (scientific/professional conferences, public policy-related debates,
activist meetings, alternative therapeutic groups).
LEVEL OF ORIGINALITY
This is the first qualitative sociological research project to take a look at the development of (post-)Yugoslav
activist efforts to transform mental health services. The project narrows the gap in mental health-related
research between Western and Eastern Europe, zooms in on service users and LGBTQ activist groups as
actors in the process of psychiatry democratisation, and problematises the nation-state as the privileged unit
of analysis by tracing transnational activist cooperations within and beyond the (post-)Yugoslav space.
PRIMARY RESEARCHERS INVOLVED
Dr Bojan Bilic