Asylum Statistics and the Psycho-Social Reality of the Hungarian Kingdom

    Research output: Contribution to Book/Report typesChapterpeer-review

    Abstract (may include machine translation)

    This chapter explores the grounds on which psychiatrists could legitimately build and spread their social criticism. Relying on published statistics and the author’s original survey of thousands of asylum patient files, Lafferton reconstructs the patient populations of three major mental asylums liable to use public services of mental care between 1850 and 1915. The analysis of the social parameters of the inmate population (including those of gender, age at the time of admission, marital status, religious affiliation, social and professional status), and the pathological medical categories assigned to them (distribution by various mental illnesses) reflects the Hungarian Kingdom’s social and cultural diversity and complexity, distorted in revealing ways by social, class and gender inequalities. In addition to the critical reassessment of several claims prevalent in late-nineteenth-century psychiatric literature and in recent historiography, Lafferton also underlines the importance of the degree of “modernisation,” urbanisation and “medicalisation” of the different social groups: the extent of the access to and reliance on medical services.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationMental Health in Historical Perspective
    PublisherPalgrave Macmillan
    Pages291-328
    Number of pages38
    DOIs
    StatePublished - 2022

    Publication series

    NameMental Health in Historical Perspective
    ISSN (Print)2634-6036
    ISSN (Electronic)2634-6044

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