Between Institutional Psychiatry and Mental Health Care: Social Psychiatry in The Netherlands, 1916–2000

Abstract

The term “social psychiatry” became current in the Netherlands from the late 1920s. Its meaning was imprecise. In a general way, the term referred to psychiatric approaches of mental illness that focused on its social origins and backgrounds. In this broad interpretation social psychiatry was connected to the psycho-hygienic goal of preventing mental disorders, but also to epidemiological research on the distribution of mental illness among the population at large. The treatment called “active therapy”, introduced in Dutch mental asylums in the 1920s and geared towards the social rehabilitation of the mentally ill (especially through work), was also linked with social psychiatry. In a more narrow sense social psychiatry indicated what before the 1960s was usually called “after-care” and “pre-care”: forms of medical and social assistance for patients who had been discharged from the mental asylum or who had not yet been institutionalized. This article focuses on the twentieth-century development of Dutch social psychiatry in this more narrow sense, without, however, losing sight of its wider context: on the one hand institutional psychiatry for the insane and on the other the mental hygiene movement and several outpatient mental health facilities, which targeted a variety of groups with psychosocial and behavioural problems. In fact, the vacillating position of pre- and after-care services was again and again determined by developments in these adjacent psychiatric and mental health care domains. This overview is chronologically divided into three periods: the period between and during the two world wars, when psychiatric pre- and aftercare came into being; the post-Second World War era until 1982, when the Social-Psychiatric Services expanded and professionalized; and the 1980s and 1990s, when they became integrated in community mental health centres.

Quality of life of male outpatients with personality disorders or psychotic disorders: a comparison

“…Since the mid-nineteenth century, psychiatric services have had a responsibility to help patients with severe mental illnesses who show problem behaviour in the community (Link et al, 1999;Oosterhuis, 2004). Two main groups of people use these services: those suffering from chronic and severe mental illnesses, mostly psychotic disorder, and those with personality disorders (PDs).…”

“Dictating the Suitable Way of Life”: Mental Hygiene for Children and Workers in Socialist Mexico, 1934–1940

“…In this regard, Edouard Toulouse, who set in motion reforms in psychiatric treatment in France, pointed out that mental hygiene was a new way of referring to actions that in his country had been undertaken since the end of the nineteenth century (Thomson, , p. 288). At the same time, other countries were also taking the same paths: this movement in England was known as “mental welfare,” in France as “mental prophylaxis,” in the Soviet Union as “psychohygiene” (Thomson, , p. 300), and in Germany and the Netherlands as “social psychiatry” (Oosterhuis, ; Schmiedebach & Priebe, ).…”

Rehabilitation: New term for or further development of social psychiatry? A Dutch perspective

“…Social psychiatry in those days, unfortunately, was not active and outreaching, and had no overall plan what to do with these patients and their families in the community. The Amsterdam tradition of the Social Psychiatric Service set up by Querido (1935;Oosterhuis, 2004) in the 1930s on making home visits and intervening in housing, work, day activities and money, was lost and not practised. Social psychiatry got a second chance with the coming of age of the Regional Institutes of Ambulatory Mental Healthcare RIAGG, the Dutch community mental health centre (CMHC), in the early eighties when attention grew for continuity of care and mental healthcare in the community.…”