Introduction. Deinstitutionalisation and the Pathways of Post-War Psychiatry in the Western World Despo Kritsotaki1, Vicky Long2 and Matthew Smith3
Introduction. Deinstitutionalisation and the Pathways of Post-War Psychiatry in the Western World Despo Kritsotaki1, Vicky Long2 and Matthew Smith3 1Department of History, University of Crete, Heraklion, Greece 2Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, UK 3Department of History, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK Near the small village of Gartcosh, located in the north-eastern quadrant of the greater Glasgow conurbation, there is an imposing two-towered gothic building that used to serve as the Main Administration Building of Gartloch Hospital. Surrounded by a fence, designed to keep people out, rather than to keep them in, its windows are either broken or boarded up. Inside, what is left of the floors is strewn with detritus, ranging from broken bits of furniture and torn curtains to crumbling plaster and bent nails. It is only when one looks up to the elaborate arched and buttressed ceiling, painted in shades of aquamarine, scarlet and vermillion, that a hint of the former grandeur of the place becomes apparent. Established in 1896 by the City of Glasgow and District Lunacy Board, Gartloch Hospital was one of dozens of Scottish psychiatric institutions built between the end of the eighteenth century and the middle of the twentieth century. It would exist for exactly 100 years, typically housing between 500 and 800 patients. Although it functioned primarily as a psychiatric facility for the city’s poor, as with similar institutions, it also served other functions, including a tuberculosis sanitaria soon after it opened, and as an Emergency Medical Services hospital during the First World War.
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