Forgotten paths: culture and ethnicity in Catalan mental health policies (1900-39)

Between 1900 and 1939 the regional government in Catalonia discussed a complete reform of the psychiatric institutions inherited from the nineteenth century. The debate was centred on the Spanish government’s lack of interest in mental health policies and the growing demand for services. The projects developed between 1900 and 1939 opened a wide-ranging discussion on the role of ethnic and cultural factors in shaping mental illness, and the need to adapt the new facilities to the ethnic features of Catalonia. This study explores the production of Catalan psychiatric discourses and their ideological roots, and the development of public policies up to the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936—39). The paper concludes with a discussion of the influence of pre-war Catalan mental health policies on the wartime practice of psychiatry and, later, on the development of the French psychothérapie institutionnelle after World War II.