Psychiatry in Communist Europe (Mental Health in Historical Perspective)

This is the first book to address the history of psychiatry under Communism in Central and Eastern Europe, from the Soviet Union to East Germany. It brings together new research addressing understandings of mental health and disorder, treatments and therapies, and the interplay between politics, ideology and psychiatry. It challenges assumptions about the extent of political control, exploring beyond the instances of punitive abuse of psychiatry, and recognizing the international exchanges which informed the development of research and practice in the region.
The authors discuss:
• Treatments such as work therapy, insulin shock therapy, antipsychotic medications
• International exchanges between the USA, Western Europe, USSR and Central Asia
• Environmental, social and biological explanations of mental health and illness
• The relationship between psychiatry, ideology and the Communist state
• Soviet reponses to antipsychiatry and 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'

Table of Contents
1. Communist Europe and Transnational Psychiatry; Sarah Marks and Mat Savelli
2. The Dialectics of Labour in a Psychiatric Ward: Work Therapy in the
Kaschenko Hospital; Irina Sirotkina and Marina Kokorina
3. Insulin Coma Therapy and the Construction of Therapeutic Effectiveness in Stalin's Soviet Union, 1936-1953; Benjamin Zajicek
4. Soviet Psychiatry and Drug Addiction in Central Asia: The Construction
of 'Narcomania'; Alisher Latypov
5. Psychiatry & Ideology: The Emergence of 'Asthenic Neurosis' in Communist Romania; Corina Doboș
6. The History of the Hungarian Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology between 1948 and 1968; Melinda Kovai
7. Ecology, Humanism, and Mental Health in Communist Czechoslovakia ; Sarah Marks
8. Beyond the Therapeutic Revolution: Psychopharmaceuticals Crossing the Berlin Wall; Volker Hess
9. Blame George Harrison: Drug Use and Psychiatry in Communist Yugoslavia; Mat Savelli
10. Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Russian Variations on a Psychiatric Theme; Rebecca Reich

Sarah Marks is Research Fellow in History and Philosophy of Science at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, UK. She teaches and writes on the history of psychiatry, psychology and mental health.

Mat Savelli is Postdoctoral Fellow at McMaster University, Canada. His research encompasses work on the history of psychiatry in Yugoslavia, the history and sociology of addiction, and the global advertising of psychopharmaceutical medications.