Italian colonial psychiatry: outlines of a discipline, and practical achievements in Libya and the Horn of Africa

Abstract

This article describes the establishment of psychiatry in Italy's former colonies during the period 1906-43, in terms of the clinical and institutional mechanisms, the underlying theories and the main individuals involved. 'Colonial psychiatry' (variously called 'ethnographic', 'comparative' or 'racial' psychiatry) - the object of which was both to care for mentally afflicted colonists and local people and also to understand and make sense of their pathologies - received most attention in colonial Libya, starting in the first months of the Italian occupation (1911-12) and then taking institutional form in the 1930s; in the colonies of what was known as 'Italian East Africa', on the other hand, less was said about psychiatric care, and practical achievements were correspondingly limited.

The political use of psychiatry: A comparison between totalitarian regimes

“…the Inuit in Canada or the Aboriginals in Australia) (Kral, 2016) as well as to the most recent attacks on mental health care institutions seen as symbol of Westernalization (Carta & Bhugra, 2015). Colonialism has definitely shown that the development of democracy in the Western countries has not always been accompanied by a rapid abandoning of repressive instruments including the political abuse of psychiatry (Butts, 1979; Scarfone, 2016). Future research will therefore have the objective of examining the similarities and differences in the use of psychiatry in the various repressive regimes (e.g.…”

‘Psychosis of civilization’: a colonial-situated diagnosis

“…5 In fact, this discipline developed more in Libya than in the Horn of Africa, the other area where Italy had established colonies since the end of the nineteenth century. 6 The Italians did not set up psychiatric hospitals in Asmara (Eritrea), Mogadishu (Somalia) or Addis Ababa (Ethiopia, occupied only during 1936-41), nor did any psychiatrists who had settled there develop theoretical insights into 'colonial psychiatry' (Scarfone, 2016).…”